By sunrise I had convinced myself that the letter meant nothing.<\/p>\n
R could have stood for a caseworker, an attorney, an agency clerk, or some administrative notation whose meaning had disappeared with time.<\/p>\n
That explanation would have been easier to accept if Rebecca\u2019s adoption had been handled through a conventional agency.<\/p>\n
It hadn\u2019t.<\/p>\n
Carol had always described it as a private placement arranged through people her family trusted.<\/p>\n
At the time, I considered that good fortune.<\/p>\n
Now I sat at the kitchen table with the folder spread before me, rereading documents I had signed almost four decades earlier.<\/p>\n
The names were familiar.<\/p>\n
The facts were not.<\/p>\n
Or perhaps I had simply never looked closely enough.<\/p>\n
Rebecca had come to us when she was only weeks old. The biological parents were listed as confidential. The attorney handling the placement was Franklin Dale, a Millfield lawyer who had died more than fifteen years earlier.<\/p>\n
I remembered him mainly as a bald man who smelled of peppermint and wore three-piece suits even in July.<\/p>\n
There was nothing visibly improper in the papers.<\/p>\n
Yet the phrase Carol had used for years returned to me.<\/p>\n
Your mother knew somebody.<\/p>\n
I had never asked who.<\/p>\n
Why would I?<\/p>\n
We wanted a child. A child needed a home. Adults we trusted handled the paperwork.<\/p>\n
That had been enough.<\/p>\n
I poured coffee and left it untouched.<\/p>\n
At eight thirty, the phone rang.<\/p>\n
Rebecca.<\/p>\n
I stared at the screen before answering.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou\u2019re awake,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m seventy-two, not seventeen.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cYou were always up before me even when I was seventeen.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cYou considered noon early.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cDid you eat breakfast?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cCoffee.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cCoffee is not breakfast.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIt contains beans.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThat joke was bad when Mom used it.\u201d<\/p>\n
The silence that followed was small but painful.<\/p>\n
Rebecca recovered first. \u201cI was thinking of coming back next weekend.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cYou don\u2019t need to.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI wasn\u2019t asking permission.\u201d<\/p>\n
I smiled faintly. \u201cThat sounds familiar.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cDad?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cYeah?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat did Mom mean?\u201d<\/p>\n
I looked down at the adoption folder.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat are you talking about?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cAt the hospital. She told me I deserved the truth.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cShe was fading in and out.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cNo. She looked straight at me.\u201d<\/p>\n
I rubbed my forehead.<\/p>\n
\u201cDo you know something?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cNo.\u201d<\/p>\n
The lie came too quickly.<\/p>\n
Rebecca heard it.<\/p>\n
\u201cDad.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI found something strange in an old file.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat file?\u201d<\/p>\n
I hesitated.<\/p>\n
\u201cYour adoption papers.\u201d<\/p>\n
Silence.<\/p>\n
Rebecca had always known she was adopted. Carol and I agreed before bringing her home that there would be no dramatic revelation someday. Adoption was simply part of her history.<\/p>\n
She had never seemed troubled by it.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat\u2019s strange?\u201d she asked.<\/p>\n
\u201cProbably nothing.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cA handwritten note.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat does it say?\u201d<\/p>\n
I read the line.<\/p>\n
\u201cWho\u2019s R?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t know.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cDo you think it means Grandma Ruth?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t know.\u201d<\/p>\n
Another silence.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou said \u2018probably nothing,\u2019 but you don\u2019t sound like you believe that.\u201d<\/p>\n
I pushed the papers away. \u201cYour mother asked me to do something before she died.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat?\u201d<\/p>\n
I closed my eyes.<\/p>\n
There was no good reason to keep Anna secret now.<\/p>\n
\u201cShe asked me to find somebody.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWho?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cA woman named Anna Mercer.\u201d<\/p>\n
Rebecca waited.<\/p>\n
\u201cShe was someone I knew before your mother.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cKnew how?\u201d<\/p>\n
I almost laughed at the directness.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe were engaged.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cOh.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cLong before Carol and I got married.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI understand chronological order, Dad.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cRight.\u201d<\/p>\n
Rebecca breathed out slowly. \u201cWhy would Mom ask you to find your former fianc\u00e9e?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThat is precisely the question.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd she asked you right before she died?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cYes.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat did she say?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cShe said I would understand after I found Anna.\u201d<\/p>\n
Rebecca went quiet again.<\/p>\n
I did not tell her the final sentence.<\/p>\n
Forgive me in advance.<\/p>\n
Not yet.<\/p>\n
\u201cAre you going to look for her?\u201d Rebecca asked.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t know.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThat means yes.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI buried my wife four days ago.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI know.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t want to turn her last hours into some investigation.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cMaybe Mom wanted you to.\u201d<\/p>\n
I looked toward Carol\u2019s empty chair.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat if I find something I would rather not know?\u201d<\/p>\n
Rebecca answered without hesitation.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat doesn\u2019t make it untrue.\u201d<\/p>\n
After we hung up, I sat there for nearly an hour.<\/p>\n
Rebecca had inherited that stubborn insistence on uncomfortable facts from somewhere.<\/p>\n
Until that week, I would have said Carol.<\/p>\n
By noon, I drove to the cemetery.<\/p>\n
The fresh soil above Carol\u2019s grave was darker than the surrounding earth. Funeral flowers lay against the temporary marker, their petals already curling at the edges.<\/p>\n
I stood with my hands in my coat pockets.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou left me a mess,\u201d I said.<\/p>\n
Wind moved across the cemetery grass.<\/p>\n
\u201cI know that sounds selfish.\u201d<\/p>\n
A pickup passed on the road beyond the fence.<\/p>\n
\u201cThirty-six years, Carol.\u201d<\/p>\n
My voice failed on her name.<\/p>\n
I stared at the flowers until my vision cleared.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhy couldn\u2019t you tell me?\u201d<\/p>\n
No answer came.<\/p>\n
I felt foolish expecting one.<\/p>\n
Then anger rose again, quiet and dense.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf this was something small, you would have told me yourself.\u201d<\/p>\n
That was the problem.<\/p>\n
Carol had never been dramatic.<\/p>\n
She did not manufacture mysteries.<\/p>\n
If she believed I needed to find Anna after forty years, then Anna knew something Carol could not bring herself to say.<\/p>\n
I returned home and took out my laptop.<\/p>\n
Searching for Anna should have been simple in an age when strangers could locate one another through school groups, public records, photographs, and social media.<\/p>\n
It wasn\u2019t.<\/p>\n
Anna Mercer was not an unusual name.<\/p>\n
The college alumni directory listed no current address.<\/p>\n
Old classmates produced marriages, divorces, deaths, and changed surnames.<\/p>\n
I spent five hours following people who turned out to be unrelated.<\/p>\n
Near dusk, I found a scanned photograph from our graduating class.<\/p>\n
There she was.<\/p>\n
Twenty years old.<\/p>\n
Dark hair to her shoulders.<\/p>\n
A serious mouth that always looked on the verge of smiling.<\/p>\n
And those eyes.<\/p>\n
I enlarged the image.<\/p>\n
Green.<\/p>\n
My fingers froze on the keyboard.<\/p>\n
I leaned closer.<\/p>\n
Green eyes were not evidence of anything.<\/p>\n
Millions of people had green eyes.<\/p>\n
Anna\u2019s were darker than Rebecca\u2019s anyway.<\/p>\n
Still, I heard myself say, \u201cNo.\u201d<\/p>\n
I shut the laptop.<\/p>\n
The house felt too warm.<\/p>\n
I opened the back door and stood on the porch until cold air cleared my head.<\/p>\n
That was when another memory surfaced.<\/p>\n
The summer before Anna disappeared, my mother had invited her to dinner.<\/p>\n
Ruth had been polite all evening.<\/p>\n
Too polite, I now realized.<\/p>\n
Afterward, while Anna helped Carol clear dishes at a church event several weeks later, my mother had made some remark I could no longer remember.<\/p>\n
Anna went quiet.<\/p>\n
When I asked what was wrong, she told me nothing.<\/p>\n
At twenty-two, I had accepted nothing as an answer.<\/p>\n
That habit was beginning to look expensive.<\/p>\n
The next morning, I called the alumni office.<\/p>\n
The woman who answered was cheerful until I explained I was searching for someone from the class of 1985.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe can\u2019t release private contact information.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m not asking you to.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat are you asking?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cCould you forward a message?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIf we have a current email, perhaps.\u201d<\/p>\n
I gave Anna\u2019s full name.<\/p>\n
Keys clicked.<\/p>\n
\u201cNo current address.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cDo you have anything?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cHer record hasn\u2019t been updated in years.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat about classmates listed as emergency contacts?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWe don\u2019t maintain that.\u201d<\/p>\n
I thanked her and nearly hung up.<\/p>\n
Then she said, \u201cYou might try the reunion committee from the thirty-year gathering. Several class members volunteered to locate former students.\u201d<\/p>\n
She gave me two names.<\/p>\n
One was unfamiliar.<\/p>\n
The other was Diane Keller.<\/p>\n
I sat back.<\/p>\n
I remembered Diane.<\/p>\n
She had been Anna\u2019s roommate for one semester and one of her closest friends afterward.<\/p>\n
More importantly, Diane had been the person I called after Anna vanished.<\/p>\n
In 1985, she refused to help me.<\/p>\n
I searched for her.<\/p>\n
Ten minutes later I had a number.<\/p>\n
It took another twenty minutes to press call.<\/p>\n
A woman answered on the fourth ring.<\/p>\n
\u201cHello?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIs this Diane Keller?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWho\u2019s asking?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cMy name is Walter Hayes.\u201d<\/p>\n
Silence.<\/p>\n
Not ordinary silence.<\/p>\n
Recognition.<\/p>\n
\u201cDiane?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI know who you are.\u201d<\/p>\n
My skin prickled.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s been a long time.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cForty-one years.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cYou remember exactly.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI remember that year.\u201d<\/p>\n
I gripped the phone.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m trying to find Anna.\u201d<\/p>\n
The line became so quiet I checked the screen to make sure the call had not dropped.<\/p>\n
Finally Diane said, \u201cWhy?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cMy wife died.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m sorry.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cBefore she died, she asked me to find Anna.\u201d<\/p>\n
Diane inhaled sharply.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou\u2019re married to Carol?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWas.\u201d<\/p>\n
Another silence.<\/p>\n
I stood.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou knew Carol?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI have to go.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWait.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI can\u2019t help you.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cYou haven\u2019t even heard why\u2014\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI said I can\u2019t help.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cDiane, please.\u201d<\/p>\n
Her voice hardened. \u201cSome things should have been dealt with forty years ago.\u201d<\/p>\n
My chest tightened.<\/p>\n
\u201cI tried.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cNo.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cYou tried to find Anna after everything was already over.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cEverything was over because she left me.\u201d<\/p>\n
Diane said nothing.<\/p>\n
\u201cDidn\u2019t she?\u201d<\/p>\n
A faint sound came through the phone, almost like a sigh.<\/p>\n
\u201cDiane.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI shouldn\u2019t have answered.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cYou knew why she left.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m hanging up.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cDid my mother have something to do with it?\u201d<\/p>\n
The question stopped her.<\/p>\n
I heard breathing.<\/p>\n
Then Diane said, very quietly, \u201cWalter, if you find Anna, don\u2019t go to her expecting the story you\u2019ve been telling yourself.\u201d<\/p>\n
The call ended.<\/p>\n
I remained standing beside the kitchen table with the phone against my ear.<\/p>\n
Diane had not given me an address.<\/p>\n
She had given me something worse.<\/p>\n
A reason to believe the past I remembered was not the past that had actually happened.<\/p>\n
By sunrise I had convinced myself that the letter meant nothing. R could have stood for a caseworker, an attorney, an agency clerk, or some administrative notation whose meaning had … <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":21959,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-21963","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-insightdrama"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21963","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=21963"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21963\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22008,"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21963\/revisions\/22008"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/21959"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=21963"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=21963"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=21963"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}