Audrey held out her hand for the phone, but I hesitated.
The man on the other end had just learned that Hannah was dead. Audrey had only just learned he existed. I wanted to protect them both from saying something they couldn’t take back.
“Daniel,” I said, “Audrey is sitting beside me. She’d like to speak to you.”
His breath caught. “I’d like that.”
I passed her the phone.
Audrey stared at it for a second before lifting it to her ear. “Hello?”
I heard his voice, low and unsteady, but couldn’t make out the words.
“Yes,” Audrey said. “That’s my name.”
She listened. Her fingers tightened around the little yellow sweater.
Then she asked the question I’d been afraid she would ask.
“Why didn’t you come for me?”
I could hear Daniel’s answer this time.
“I didn’t know where you were.”
Audrey looked at me. “Mom wrote that you knew about me.”
“I knew Hannah was pregnant,” he said. “I was there when she picked your name. Then she told me she’d changed her mind about us. She asked me to leave her alone.”
Audrey’s eyes filled. “You could have called after I was born.”
“I did. The number stopped working. I went to her apartment, but she’d moved. I thought she didn’t want me to find you.”
I remembered Hannah leaving her apartment in the final month of her pregnancy. She’d come to stay with me because she didn’t want to be alone while Mark worked late. At least, that was what she’d told me.
Audrey wiped her cheek. “Did you ever stop looking?”
Daniel took a moment to answer. “I stopped going to places she’d asked me to stay away from. I never stopped wondering how you were.”
“That’s different,” Audrey said.
“Yes,” he replied. “It is.”
Her honesty seemed to steady him. He didn’t try to argue.
Audrey looked down at the photograph in her lap. “What picture did you keep?”
“Hannah sent it to me before we stopped speaking. She was wearing that green coat she loved, standing outside a bakery with a paper bag in her hand. You can just see her belly. She wrote, ‘Audrey wanted cinnamon rolls.’”
Despite everything, Audrey smiled.
“She used to say things like that?” she asked.
“All the time. She blamed you for every pastry she bought.”
Audrey’s smile faded as quickly as it came. “I never got to hear her say my name.”
Daniel was quiet. Then he said, “I’m sorry.”
Audrey handed me the phone without warning and stood up.
“I need a minute.”
She went to her bedroom, still carrying the sweater. I heard the door close softly.
Daniel had heard her walk away. “I upset her.”
“She’s had fifteen years to imagine her father,” I said. “Give her time to meet the real one.”
“I will.” He paused. “Mrs. Bennett, I need to ask you something. Is Mark still in her life?”
“No. He left when she was a week old.”
Daniel exhaled sharply. “Mark was there?”
I told him what I knew: that Mark had come to the hospital, that he’d called Audrey his daughter, that he’d left the two of us behind. Daniel listened until I finished.
“Hannah told me Mark was an old friend,” he said at last. “I met him once.”
Something in his voice made me sit up. “What happened?”
“Nothing I could prove. But after Hannah and I argued, he showed up at my work. He told me to stay away from her. He said she was scared of me.”
I looked toward Audrey’s closed door.
“Hannah’s letter says something happened between you,” I said. “What was it?”
Daniel hesitated. “She found a message on my phone. It looked as if I’d asked another woman to meet me that night.”
“Had you?”
“No. I’d never seen the message before she showed it to me. I told her that, but she thought I was lying.”
A message on his phone. Mark appearing at his work. Hannah telling me Mark was the father.
Each piece seemed to fit somewhere, but I couldn’t yet see the whole picture.
“Why did you call today?” I asked. “How did you finally get my number?”
“I found something,” Daniel said. “I’ve been going through boxes from my old apartment. There was a sealed envelope from Hannah behind a drawer. I don’t know how long it had been there.”
“What did it say?”
“She wrote that she was sorry. She asked me to come to your house after Audrey was born, so we could all talk.”
I gripped the phone. “Daniel, she never told me that.”
“I know. I came here as soon as I read it. I’m staying at a motel about twenty minutes away. I was calling to ask whether she was still with you.”
I looked at Hannah’s handwriting on the letter in my lap. She had tried to reach him. Somehow, her letter had gone missing before he could read it.
“Did she post it?” I asked.
“There’s no stamp. She must have slipped it under my door.”
“And it ended up behind a drawer?”
“Yes.”
Neither of us spoke for a moment.
Then Daniel said, “There was one more thing in the envelope. A photo of the two of us, cut straight down the middle. On the back she’d written, ‘Ask Mark why.’”
My eyes moved to the photograph I’d found in Hannah’s box. Its edges were whole.
I told Daniel I would call him back, then hung up and crossed to Audrey’s room.
She was sitting on her bed, reading another birthday letter. The sweater lay across her knees.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I should have asked before handing you the phone.”
“I asked for it.” She folded the letter carefully. “I wanted to hear him.”
I sat beside her. “How do you feel?”
“I don’t know.” She looked at me. “He remembered what Mom liked to eat. For a second, it felt like she was here.”
I put my arm around her. We sat together until she leaned her head against my shoulder.
Then Audrey lifted the letter she’d been reading.
“This is the one for my first birthday,” she said. “Mom wrote something strange.”
She showed me the last paragraph.
If Grandma gives you the little silver key when you’re older, ask her to show you what it opens. I’m putting it somewhere safe until I can explain everything.
“A key?” I said. “I didn’t see one.”
Audrey reached into the box beside her bed. “It was under the ribbon.”
A small silver key lay in her palm. Attached to it was a paper tag with three faded words in Hannah’s handwriting:
Mom’s sewing room.
I stood so quickly Audrey looked startled.
Hannah had never had a sewing room.
But I had one. And for fifteen years, the old locked cabinet in its corner had held boxes I’d packed away after her death.
Audrey followed me down the hall. I knelt in front of the cabinet and pushed the key into the lock.
It turned.
Inside, on top of a stack of fabric, sat a large envelope with my name across the front.
I opened it and pulled out a single page.
It was a note from Hannah, dated two days before Audrey was born.
Mom, I need you to hear this from me before anyone else tells you. Mark has been in our house while you were out. I caught him searching through my things. He knows about the letters for Audrey.
My hand went cold.
Audrey leaned over my shoulder as I read the final line.
If he tells you I don’t trust Daniel, please don’t believe him. I’m going to tell Daniel the truth at the hospital. Mark said he’d make sure I never got the chance………………….
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