Desmond became my foster placement when I was five, after my birth mother, Adeline, disappeared from a shelter she’d checked into two towns over and was never located again. I don’t remember much from before him — just fragments, none of them steady. My earliest real memory is riding on his shoulders at a county fair, one hand fisted in cotton candy, the other gripping his hair.
When his diagnosis came last winter, I moved back into his house without a second thought. I cooked, I drove him to chemo, I sat beside his bed on the nights the pain finally quieted him. None of it was obligation. He was the only father I had ever actually known.
After the service, the house filled with murmured condolences and the clink of someone’s fork against a casserole dish. I stood near the hallway holding a glass of iced tea I never drank, the whole house still smelling like his cedar aftershave and sawdust.
My aunt Priscilla appeared beside me like she’d been standing there all along, pulling me into a hug that lasted slightly too long.
« You don’t have to be alone in this house, » she murmured. « You could stay with me for a while, get some distance. »
I didn’t answer directly. Her smile didn’t waver. « We’ll talk later, sweetheart. »
A woman I didn’t recognize touched my elbow a few minutes later — maybe mid-sixties, silver hair pulled back tightly, a cardigan buttoned wrong by one hole.
« You’re Wren, » she said. It wasn’t a question.
« I’m sorry — did you know my dad through work? »
« I knew Desmond a long time, » she said. « I’m Colette. I used to be his caseworker, years back, before I retired. »
Nothing about her face sparked recognition.
« You weren’t meant to hear any of this from me while he was still alive, » she said, glancing around the room once, then again. « He asked me to wait. »
« Wait for what? »
She lowered her voice further. « If you want to understand what actually happened with your mother, look in the metal toolbox at the very back of his shed. Underneath the tarp. »
« I don’t— »
« I promised him, » she said simply, pressing a folded card into my hand. « I’m sorry you’re only learning this now. »
And then she moved off into the crowd and was gone before I could ask another question, her words louder in my head than the low murmur of the room.
Underneath the tarp.
