“Everything you did was for me?” I repeated.
Dad tried to hold my hand, but I stepped back.
“I waited for you every Saturday,” I said. “The woman at the children’s home would let me sit by the front window. I thought if I watched closely enough, I’d see your car before anyone else did.”
His face crumpled.
“I know.”
“No, you don’t. I kept my clothes in that grocery bag for six months. I was afraid if I unpacked, you’d come while I wasn’t ready.”
Dad reached beneath his pillow and pulled out a yellowed envelope. My name was written across the front in my mother’s handwriting.
I knew it instantly. Mom always made the last letter of my name curl upward, like a tiny wave.
“She left this for you,” he said.
My chest tightened. “You had a letter from Mom all this time?”
“She gave it to me two days before she died. She said to keep it safe until you were old enough to understand.”
“I’m thirty,” I said. “When were you planning to tell me?”
“I tried to find you.”
I let out a bitter laugh. “The children’s home knew where I was for years.”
“I know.” His voice broke. “I went there.”
That stopped me.
“The first time, they wouldn’t let me see you. The second time, they told me you’d been moved. After that, every place I called said something different.”
“You could’ve written.”
“I did.”
I thought of all the afternoons I’d asked the staff whether I had mail. All the times they’d shaken their heads.
Dad saw the look on my face. “You never got them.”
“No.”
He stared at the envelope as if it could answer for him. “I should have gone back. I should have kept looking until I found you. Nothing I tell you changes that.”
For the first time since I’d entered the room, he wasn’t asking me to forgive him.
He held out the envelope. Inside was a photograph of Mom standing beside a woman I’d never seen. They had their arms around each other, laughing into the camera. On the back, in Mom’s handwriting, were six words: Find Ruth. She knows what happened.
My fingers turned cold.
“What happened?” I asked.
Dad looked toward the closed door. “Read the letter.”
The paper was thin and soft at the folds. I opened it carefully.
My darling girl,
If you’re reading this, then your father has finally told you the truth. I hope he’s told you the whole of it, even the part that makes him ashamed.
I stopped. Dad was watching my face, tears gathered in his eyes.
I kept reading.
I’m frightened of what Linda knows about me. If she comes to this house after I’m gone, please find Ruth Bell. She has the records I couldn’t keep here.
“Linda?” I looked up. “Mom knew Linda?”
Dad nodded once.
I heard footsteps outside the room. Linda’s voice came through the door, too low for me to make out the words. Ben answered her. Then the footsteps stopped.
“Mom died before you married Linda,” I whispered.
“She did.”
“How long had you known her?”
Dad swallowed. “Longer than I told you.”
The door handle moved. Dad’s hand closed over mine.
“Put the letter in your bag,” he said quickly. “Don’t let her see you have it.”
Linda opened the door before I could answer.
She looked at Dad, then at the empty envelope on the bed. Her expression changed so fast I might have missed it if I hadn’t been watching.
“Is this a bad time?” she asked.
I folded Mom’s letter and slipped it into my coat pocket.
“Yes,” I said. “It is.”
Linda didn’t move. She kept looking at my pocket.
Behind her, Ben appeared in the doorway. He wasn’t the little boy I remembered, but I recognized the nervous way he glanced from his mother to me.
Dad drew a shaky breath. “Leave us alone, Linda.”
She ignored him. “Whatever he’s told you, he’s very ill.”
“I can see that.”
“You don’t understand what things were like back then.”
“Then explain them.”
For a moment, no one spoke. A machine beside Dad’s bed beeped steadily.
Linda gripped the doorframe. “Ask him why he took you to the children’s home that particular Saturday.”
Dad’s hand tightened around the bedsheet.
I turned to him. “Why that day?”
He looked at me with the same frightened eyes I’d seen in the car twenty years ago, just before he’d walked me to the front door and let go of my hand.
“Because,” he said, “that morning, Ben told me what he’d found in your mother’s room.”………………….
