Chapter 4 - The Name My Mother Buried
I didn't sleep. I sat at that table while the window went from black to gray to the thin, unsure light of a winter morning, and I read Walter's letter four more times.
Every time, I stopped at the same two sentences.
She said you were pregnant. She said you didn't know yet.
My mother had known. She had gone to Walter behind my back — while I was still half in love with him, still with no idea there was a baby — and she had made a choice that reshaped my entire life. Then she'd shipped me to New Hampshire and never said a word. She'd been dead nineteen years. There was no one left to ask why.
Nancy came down at six and found me still there.
"You didn't sleep."
"No."
She filled the kettle without asking. She put a mug in front of me and sat down.
"Are you going to call him?"
"I don't know."
"Mom—"
"I said I don't know, Nancy." It came out with more edge than I meant. "I'm sorry. I just need to think."
"Okay." She wrapped both hands around her cup. "Then think out loud. I'm not going anywhere."
I'd stood the photograph up against the fruit bowl so I could see it while I sat.
"He's fifty-four," I said. "He's got a whole life I was never in. What if he doesn't actually want me showing up in it? What if that investigator's information is ten years stale? What if he gave up looking?"
"The letter said eleven years."
"People stop, Nancy."
"Some do." She studied the picture. "He's got your mouth."
I didn't say anything.
"He does. Look at him."
"I've been looking at nothing else since midnight." I pressed my thumb against the table edge. "What if I call and he's furious? He's got every right to be. I gave him away. He doesn't know I didn't understand what was happening. All he knows is that somebody handed him to strangers."
"Then you tell him what you told me."
"And if he doesn't believe me?"
Nancy put her mug down.
"Mom. What's the other option? You don't call. You spend whatever years you've got left wondering. He spends his wondering. And this—" she touched the corner of the photo "—stays a thing two people carried into the ground. Is that what you want?"
It wasn't.
I found the name at the bottom of the letter. Susan Reyes. A phone number, an email.
"I'll call her first," I said. "Before him. I want to know something about who he is before I hear him say hello."
"That's fair."
I set the letter down and looked at my daughter. Fifty-one years old. Her father's nose, my jaw, my stubbornness sitting right there in it.
"You have a brother," I said.
She blinked. Once. Twice.
"Half-brother," she said carefully.
"Does that matter to you?"
She thought about it. "Ask me again once we know whether he's a good man."
It startled a small laugh out of me. "Fair enough."
I called Susan Reyes at nine. She picked up on the second ring, like she'd had the phone in her hand.
"Mrs. Boyd," she said. "I've been wondering when I'd hear from you."
"You know who I am?"
"Walter told me you'd call. Eventually." A beat. "I'm sorry for your loss. He turned into a good man, at the end. He worked hard to fix what he could."
"Can you tell me about Andrew?"
"I can tell you what I know." A shorter pause. "He's a good man too, Mrs. Boyd. Married. Two girls. He teaches high school history in Spokane, and he coaches the cross-country team every fall."
My throat closed. "Does he still want to find me?"
"He never stopped. Not one year out of eleven."
I shut my eyes. "Then I'd like his number. When you think it's the right time to give it to me."
"Mrs. Boyd," she said quietly, "the right time was a while ago."
She read me the number. I wrote it on the back of the envelope that had held Walter's letter, and I sat holding it long after we hung up.
Nancy was in the doorway. "Well?"
"He coaches cross-country," I said.
She stared at me. "You ran cross-country. All through high school."
"I know."
The quiet between us didn't need anything added to it.
Then Nancy's phone rang. She looked at the screen and her whole face shifted. "It's Paul."
Paul is my younger son.
"He must've heard something from the lawyer. About the estate."
She answered. I watched her listen. I watched her go from calm to careful to something with a harder edge.
She lowered the phone. "Walter left you something else," she said. "Besides the key and the box."
May you like
"What?"
"Paul says the attorney called him this morning. He says Walter's family is already fighting the will."
