She could have wondered about me or never thought about me at all.
Now she had a name.
Kate.
And she had been dead for nine years.
“You expect me to believe she searched for me?”
“No,” Walter said. “I expect you to ask me to prove it.”
I looked up.
He stood.
“I have something at my house.”
“I’ll come.”
My husband started to stand, but I shook my head.
“I need to do this.”
Walter and I walked next door without speaking.
I had been inside his house hundreds of times.
Suddenly, it felt like I had never been there before.
He went into his bedroom and returned carrying a faded cardboard box.
He placed it on the coffee table.
Inside were papers, old photographs, envelopes, and a tiny hospital bracelet.
He handed me a photograph first.
A young woman was holding a newborn baby.
I knew before he said anything.
Kate had my chin.
Or maybe I had hers.
“That’s you,” Walter said.
I touched the corner of the photograph.
Then I found the letters.
Some were addressed only to “My daughter.”
“She couldn’t send them,” Walter said. “For a while, she wrote anyway.”
“Did you read them?”
“Not all of them.”
I opened one.
Kate had written it when I was six.
She wondered whether I liked books.
She wondered what color my bedroom was and whether I had a night-light.
She hoped my adoptive parents made a big deal about birthdays and had traditions that were already becoming mine.
Most of all, she hoped there was always somebody waiting when I got home.
I stopped reading.
At six, I had already left the home that was supposed to be permanent.
At eight, I kept my belongings carefully packed because I had learned that moving could happen quickly.
Kate hadn’t known.
She had imagined me safe.
That didn’t undo what she had done.
But for the first time, giving me away and not wanting me no longer meant exactly the same thing.
“Margaret tried too,” Walter said.
He showed me pages written in my grandmother’s handwriting.
There were names, dates, phone numbers, crossed-out addresses, and notes beside dead ends.
“After Kate died, Margaret kept saying somebody had to find you. Then she got sick.”
“And then she died.”
He nodded.
“So you finally did the test.”
“Yes.”
I looked around his little living room.
“Why move next door?”
“I didn’t know how to contact you.”
“You could have called.”
“I know.”
“You could have written.”
“I know.”
“You could have knocked on my door and said, ‘Hi, I’m your grandfather.’”
“I know.”
His refusal to defend himself made me even angrier.
“Then why didn’t you?”
Walter sat opposite me.
“I meant to. Before I moved, I practiced what I’d say.”
“What happened?”
“I met you.”
I stared at him.
“That sounds ridiculous.”
“It is.”
He rubbed his hands together.
“The first week, you told me something about growing up in foster homes. Just casually. You were talking about why you wanted your kids to have one home they could always come back to.”
I remembered that conversation.
I had been pulling weeds.
Walter had been standing beside the fence.
“I went home,” he continued, “and realized what we’d believed all those years wasn’t true. Kate thought she’d given you a stable home. Margaret thought you had parents somewhere. And there you were telling me you grew up being moved around.”
His voice cracked.
“I didn’t know how to tell you I belonged to the family that had lost you.”
“So you said nothing.”
“That first day, yes. Then I told myself I’d tell you the next.”
“And then?”
“Your kids started coming over.”
I looked away.
“Then you invited me for coffee. Then dinner. Then your little one called me Grandpa.”
He smiled for half a second.
Then the smile disappeared.
