The footnote that became a confession

I just finished translating a line in a 19th-century novel where the protagonist mentions his mother’s hands, and I added a footnote: 'She never learned to read.' It wasn’t in the original text. I didn’t even know I was doing it until I reread it. Then I realized I’d been writing her into the margins all along—quietly, stubbornly. Coffee’s cold now. The sentence still hums.