PART 2
Walter lowered his gaze.
“She died nine years ago.”
I sat down.
For more than 40 years, my biological mother had existed somewhere in the abstract.
Maybe she was alive.
Maybe she was dead.
Maybe she was happy or miserable.
Maybe she wondered about me.
Maybe she 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 at him.
He stood.
“I have something at my house.”
“I’ll come.”
My husband began getting up, but I shook my head.
“I need to do this.”
Walter and I walked next door in silence.
I had been inside his house hundreds of times.
Now it suddenly felt completely unfamiliar.
He disappeared into his bedroom and returned carrying an old cardboard box.
He placed it on the coffee table.
Inside were documents, faded photographs, envelopes, and a tiny hospital bracelet.
The first thing he handed me was a photograph.
A young woman held a newborn baby.
I knew before Walter said anything.
Kate had my chin.
Or maybe I had hers.
“That’s you,” Walter said.
I touched the edge of the photograph.
Then I found the letters.
Several were addressed simply 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 years old.
She wondered if I liked books.
She wondered what color my bedroom was and whether I slept with a night-light.
She hoped my adoptive parents celebrated birthdays in a big way and had family traditions that were already becoming part of my childhood.
More than anything, she hoped someone was always waiting for me when I came home.
I couldn’t keep reading.
By six, I had already left the home that was supposed to be permanent.
By eight, I packed my belongings more carefully than most children because I already understood how quickly another move could happen.
Kate hadn’t known.
In her mind, I was safe.
That knowledge didn’t erase the choice she had made.
But for the first time, giving me away and not wanting me no longer felt like exactly the same thing.
“Margaret tried too,” Walter said.
He showed me pages covered in my grandmother’s handwriting.
Names.
Dates.
Phone numbers.
Crossed-out addresses.
Notes marking every dead end.
“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 small 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.”
The fact that he wouldn’t defend himself somehow made me even angrier.
“Then why didn’t you?”
Walter sat across from 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 near 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.”
A faint smile crossed his face for half a second before disappearing.
“That should’ve been the moment I told you. Instead, I got scared.”
“Of what?”
“That I’d lose all of you.”
I got up and walked toward the window.
From there, I could see my house.
Two houses.
One fence.
Two years.
“You found me,” I said. “Do you understand that? I spent my childhood wondering why nobody came. You finally found me, and then you let me spend two more years not knowing.”
“I know.”
“No. I don’t think you do.”
“I do, Abby.”
His voice stayed quiet.
“Finding you late wasn’t my choice. Not telling you once I did was.”
That stopped me.
“I was a coward,” he said. “Every week I waited made it worse. And every week I loved you all more, which made me more afraid. There’s no excuse for that.”
I looked down at Kate’s letter. “Why now?”
“I’d decided to tell you after I got sick.”
“But you didn’t.”
“No.”
“Then we handed you adoption papers.”
