Chapter 8: The Box
We met at Anna's hotel.
Neutral ground.
She had ordered coffee and left a chair angled toward the window, away from the door.
A small thing.
But it meant she had thought about what I might need.
The box was on the low table between us.
Shoebox size.
Old, the cardboard soft at the corners.
"She kept everything," Anna said.
"Every card from the family that adopted her.
Every letter she wrote to you that she never sent.
Every piece of research she did when she started looking."
I looked at the box.
I didn't touch it yet.
"Tell me about her," I said.
"Not the documents.
Her."
Anna's face changed.
Softer.
"She was funny.
Genuinely funny — the kind of person who could make anyone laugh without trying.
She was a primary school teacher for twenty years.
She loved it.
She used to say the children were the only people who were always honest with her."
"Was she happy?"
Anna considered the question properly.
"She had a good life.
She had me, she had friends, she had work she loved.
But there was always — a question underneath everything.
She never stopped wondering.
Even when she was happy, it was there."
"Did she ever marry?"
"My father left when I was three.
She raised me alone.
She said she was better at it that way." A small smile.
"She probably was."
I opened the box.
The first thing on top was a photograph.
A woman in her forties, dark hair threaded with grey, standing in a classroom doorway.
Smiling at whoever was holding the camera.
My daughter.
My hands didn't shake this time.
I had used up the shaking yesterday.
I looked at her face for a long time.
"She has my mother's nose," I said.
"I thought so too, when I met your mother."
I looked up.
"You've met my mother?"
Anna's expression shifted.
"She came to the hotel last night.
Around nine o'clock.
She said she wanted to speak to me privately before we met today."
The coffee cup in my hand went very still.
"What did she say?"
"She said she wanted to explain her side of things.
She said she hoped I wouldn't think badly of her." Anna paused.
"She also asked me not to share the box contents with anyone until the family had a chance to discuss things together."
"She asked you to wait."
"Yes."
"And you're showing me anyway."
"She's not my family," Anna said simply.
"You are."
I set the photograph down.
"Charles called her last night," I said.
"After I told him I'd spoken to a solicitor."
"I assumed something like that had happened."
I reached into the box.
Beneath the photograph were envelopes.
Dozens of them.
Each one sealed, addressed in the same careful handwriting as the letter.
Each one marked with a year.
1995.
1996.
1997.
All the way through to 2019.
Twenty-four years of letters she had written to me and never sent.
"She wrote one every year," Anna said.
"On your birthday.
She found your birth date in the adoption records."
I picked up 1994.
The first one.
"May I?"
"They're yours."
I opened it.
*Dear Evelyn — I don't know if I'll ever send this.
I don't even know if you're alive.
But today is your birthday and I wanted you to know that I think about you.
I wonder if you think about me.
I wonder if you know I'm here.*
*I'm doing all right.
The family is kind.
I have my own room with a window that looks out onto a garden.
There are apple trees.*
*I hope wherever you are, there are apple trees too.*
*Mara*
I put the letter down on the table.
Anna didn't say anything.
She just refilled my coffee cup.
Outside the hotel window, the street was full of ordinary morning.
People walking dogs.
A delivery van double-parked.
A child pulling at a parent's hand.
"I want to meet Paul," I said.
"I'd like you to be there."
"I'd like that too."
"And I'm going to speak to a solicitor.
A real one, not a bluff.
What my mother did was fraud.
I don't know yet what I want to do about it.
But I need to know what my options are."
"That's fair."
"Charles is going to push back."
"I know."
I picked up the 1994 letter again.
Read the last line once more.
*I hope wherever you are, there are apple trees.*
"She deserved better than what she got," I said.
"Yes," Anna said.
"She did."
I closed the letter carefully and placed it back in the box.
"So did you," Anna said quietly.
May you like
I didn't answer.
But I didn't disagree.
