“Yes. I think I know why.”
She invited me inside and poured coffee with hands that trembled slightly. Once we were seated across from each other, I asked the question that had followed me every mile from home.
“What did Carol want me to know?”
Anna held my gaze.
“That I never left you because you moved away.”
My chest tightened because for forty years, I had believed the letter she sent me in 1985. Anna then told me that my mother, Ruth, had visited her apartment before I left and informed her that she was completely unsuitable for me.
According to Anna, my mother had not stopped at insults about her background or family. She had threatened her father’s job and even suggested she could damage the reputation of Anna’s sister, who was preparing to marry.
“My mother did that?”
Anna looked at me quietly.
“Your mother had power, Walter. And she used it on a twenty-year-old girl whose family had almost none.”
