Chapter 6: The Brother on the Other End
He answered on the second ring.
"Hello?"
His voice was careful.
Quiet.
A little lower than I expected.
"Thomas," I said.
"This is Ellen.
Doris was my mother."
A pause.
Not long — maybe three seconds.
But I could feel everything in it.
"Ellen." He said my name like he'd practiced it.
Maybe he had.
"Thank you for calling."
"I read the letters last night.
And the document she left." I sat down at the kitchen table.
Raven had moved to the living room to give me privacy.
"I'm still trying to take all of it in."
"I understand.
Take whatever time you need."
"I don't want to take time," I said.
"I've already lost too much time.
We both have."
Another pause.
When he spoke again, his voice was slightly different — less careful.
"She told me about you.
In her letters.
She said you were stubborn in the best possible way."
Something shifted in my chest.
"She said that?"
"She said it twice.
Once in the third letter and once in the seventh." A quiet sound that might have been a laugh.
"I read them a lot."
"So did I.
Last night." I pressed my hand flat on the table.
"Thomas, I need to tell you something.
Something that wasn't in the letters she sent you."
The line went still.
"Raven told me this morning," I said.
"About the adoption.
About how it was arranged.
About a man named Gerald."
Silence.
"I don't know that name," he said slowly.
"I know.
Mom didn't put it in writing because she wasn't sure what she wanted to do with it.
But she wanted you to know the full truth.
She asked me to be the one to tell you." I took a breath.
"Your adoption wasn't just your grandparents deciding they had no choice.
Someone arranged it deliberately and was paid to do it.
A man named Gerald — he was Mom's uncle.
He took money from her father to handle the paperwork and make sure it happened quickly."
Thomas didn't speak for a long moment.
"She was paid to give me away?"
"No.
He was paid.
Gerald.
He arranged it and took money for the service.
Your grandmother — Mom's mother — may not have even known the full details." I kept my voice steady.
"Mom found out years later, from a receipt she found in her father's papers.
She never confronted Gerald.
She told herself it was over.
But when you found her, she realized it wasn't."
I heard him exhale slowly.
"Is he still alive?"
"Yes.
He's eighty-one.
He lives nearby."
Another long silence.
When Thomas spoke again, his voice was different — not angry, exactly.
Careful in a new way, like someone measuring the weight of something before deciding whether to pick it up.
"What did she want us to do?" he asked.
"She said she wasn't asking us to do anything.
She said she just wanted you to know the truth." I paused.
"But she also said she was always the one who waited too long.
And that she didn't want me to be like her."
Thomas was quiet for a moment.
Then: "She sounds like someone I would have liked very much."
My throat tightened.
"She was."
"Ellen." He said my name again, differently this time.
"I'd like to meet you.
If you're willing.
Not to talk about Gerald — just to meet.
Just to sit in the same room as someone who knew her."
I looked at the window.
The garden.
The roses she had planted fifteen years ago and tended every single morning.
"Come this weekend," I said.
May you like
"I'll make tea."
He arrived Saturday.
