Anna’s eyes.
That was why Anna’s eyes had seemed so familiar.
Rebecca had Anna’s eyes.
For all those years, I’d looked into them without ever knowing whose they were.
Then I found another envelope.
The handwriting on it was more familiar to me than my own.
Carol’s.
It was addressed to my mother.
‘Ruth, I can’t keep doing this. Walter still believes Anna left because she stopped loving him. I heard what you said to her that day, and I should have told him then. I didn’t. Part of me was afraid that if he knew the truth, he’d go after her.’
I had to stop reading.
Then I continued.
‘Now there’s a baby involved. You keep telling me Anna has signed the papers and wants the child placed somewhere else, but that doesn’t make what we did right. If Walter ever learns the truth, he’ll never forgive either of us.’
Below Carol’s letter were four words written in my mother’s handwriting.
‘Then make sure he doesn’t.’
I couldn’t tell Anna over the phone.
—
It was after eleven when I stood at her door again, clutching the letters.
Anna opened it.
“She’s alive,” I said. “I found our daughter.”
She froze.
“You found her?”
“Her name is Rebecca.”
“Rebecca?”
“My Rebecca. The daughter Carol and I adopted.”
Anna covered her mouth.
“Oh my God.”
“She has a good life.”
“Family?”
“Two boys.”
Tears filled Anna’s eyes.
“I’m a grandmother.”
“Yes.”
She lowered herself onto the porch step and began to cry.
I sat beside her until she finally wiped her face.
“Does she know about me?”
“No.”
“Are you going to tell her?”
Rebecca had buried Carol only weeks earlier.
Now I had to tell her that the woman she’d known as her mother had hidden the truth about her birth for thirty-eight years.
“I don’t know how.”
Anna looked toward the letters.
“Neither did Carol, apparently.”
“What if it destroys everything Rebecca remembers about her?”
“Walter, your mother decided what I was allowed to know. Carol decided what you were allowed to know.”
I stared at the letters.
“And now I’d be deciding for Rebecca.”
“Yes.”
—
The next morning, I drove to Columbus and placed the letters on Rebecca’s kitchen table.
“Dad, what is this?”
“Something your mother should’ve told us years ago.”
