“So you wrote the letter.”
She nodded. “And you left.”
“Because you asked me to.”
“I know.”
We sat with that for a while.
Finally, I asked whether she’d married.
“No.”
“Was there anyone after me?”
“There were people I cared about. It never became that kind of life.”
I wanted to apologize, although I didn’t yet know what an apology from me could change.
“You could have told me later,” I said. “Once I was settled. Once you were away from her.”
Anna pressed her hands together.
“I did try to reach you.”
“When?”
“Three weeks after I sent the letter. I found out I was pregnant.”
PART 4: The Other Person in the House
For several seconds, I couldn’t hear anything beyond the refrigerator humming behind her.
“Pregnant?”
“Yes.”
“With our child?”
Her eyes filled. “Our daughter.”
I pushed back from the table, then stopped because I had nowhere to go.
“Where is she?”
Anna shook her head.
“What do you mean?”
“I don’t know where she is. I signed the adoption papers after she was born.”
The hurt came out as anger before I could stop it.
“How could you do that without telling me?”
Anna flinched.
I saw her gripping her own fingers and lowered my voice.
“I’m sorry. Please tell me what happened.”
She had gone to my mother’s house asking for my new number and address. She thought a baby might soften Ruth, that the prospect of a grandchild would make her help them.
Instead, my mother repeated her threats.
Then she told Anna I had already found someone else.
“She said it had started before I sent the letter. That you hadn’t known how to end things with me.”
“That’s a lie.”
“I understand that now.”
“Who did she say I was with?”
Anna looked at me for a long moment.
“Carol.”
I reached into my pocket and closed my hand around the ring.
Carol and I had known each other casually then. Our relationship hadn’t begun until later, after I was already convinced Anna wanted nothing to do with me.
“My mother invented that,” I said.
“There’s something else, Walter.”
I couldn’t bear the carefulness in her voice.
“Carol was in the house that day.”
“What?”
“She’d brought something over for your mother. Ruth thought she’d left, but she was still in the front room. She heard us.”
I searched Anna’s face.
“How could you know that?”
“Because fifteen years ago, Carol found me through my sister and wrote to me.”
Anna left the table and returned with an envelope. My wife’s handwriting was on the front.
