Inside, Carol had admitted hearing Ruth threaten Anna. She had known about the pregnancy. She had known why Anna stayed away.
She said she should have spoken up. She said she had been afraid of losing me. She asked Anna to forgive her.
There was nothing about where the baby had gone.
I read the letter twice.
“You didn’t answer?”
“I couldn’t think of anything to say that would give me those years back.”
Carol had listened to me talk about being abandoned. She had held me when I admitted how ashamed I felt that Anna had found it so easy to leave.
She had known the truth every time.
I put the letter down before I tore it.
“Did you ever look for our daughter?” I asked.
Anna nodded. “I asked questions. I wrote to the contact I had. By then, the address was no longer any good. It was a private arrangement, and I had so little information.”
“Who arranged it?”
“Your mother handled everything through a woman named Marjorie.”
My mother had kept receipts for appliances she no longer owned. She had filed church bulletins by year.
After her death, I had packed her papers into boxes and carried them up to my attic. Ten years later, most were still unopened.
“She might have kept something,” I said.
Anna looked up.
“I can’t promise,” I added. “But I’ll look.”
PART 5: The Letters in the Attic
I barely slept that night.
When daylight reached the bedroom curtains, I climbed into the attic and began opening boxes.
There were tax returns, birthday cards, photographs with names written on the back. I found a drawing I’d made in elementary school. My mother had dated it and saved it in an envelope.
I sat holding it for a moment, unable to reconcile that care with what Anna had told me.
Then I put it aside and kept looking.
At the bottom of a carton was a shoebox sealed with yellowed tape. My mother’s handwriting ran across the lid.
PRIVATE.
Inside were letters from Marjorie.
