Chapter 6: The Woman Named Carol
Carol.
The name on the birth certificate.
Thomas's wife — or the woman who had once been his wife.
My biological mother.
I stared at the text for a long time.
Then I typed back: *How do you know who I am?*
The reply came within seconds.
*Thomas told me.
Six months ago, when he found you.
He called me.
We hadn't spoken in twelve years but he called me the day he saw you in that hospital hallway.
He said, "Carol, I found her.
She's here and she doesn't know and I don't know what to do."*
I read the message twice.
*Can we meet?* I typed.
*I'm already outside.*
I looked up.
Through the window of the coffee shop, a woman was standing on the pavement.
She was in her early sixties, grey-haired, slight.
She was watching the door with her hands clasped in front of her.
When our eyes met through the glass, she raised one hand in a small, uncertain wave.
I went outside.
We stood facing each other on the pavement.
Neither of us spoke for a moment.
"You look like him," she said finally.
Her voice was soft.
"Around the eyes."
"I've been told that," I said, though no one had ever told me that before today.
She almost smiled.
"Can we walk?"
We walked along Mercer Street, slowly, not quite side by side.
"I need to know something first," I said.
"Why did you give me up?"
She was quiet for a few steps.
"We were very young.
Thomas was twenty-eight, I was twenty-six.
We had Diane already — she was four.
Thomas had just lost his job.
We were in a bad place." She paused.
"That's the practical answer."
"What's the other answer?"
"Thomas and I were not doing well.
As a couple.
The pregnancy — you — came at the worst possible time.
We made a decision that we both regretted almost immediately, but by the time we tried to reverse it, the adoption had been finalized." She stopped walking.
"There was not a year that went by that I didn't think about you."
I didn't know what to say to that.
"Did Diane know?" I asked.
Carol turned to look at me.
"That's what I came to tell you.
Yes.
Diane has always known.
Thomas told her when she was eighteen.
He thought she was old enough.
He thought she would understand."
"She didn't."
"She was furious.
She felt — I think she felt that you were proof that her parents had chosen to give away a child rather than fix their marriage.
That you were the thing they had sacrificed to save something that fell apart anyway." Carol's voice was careful, measured, like she had thought about this for years.
"She never forgave Thomas for it.
That's why they stopped speaking.
Not because of anything he did to her.
Because of what he did to you."
I stopped walking.
"She blamed him," I said slowly, "for giving me up."
"Yes."
"And then when she found out he left everything to me—"
"She felt it again," Carol said.
"That same thing.
That he was choosing you over her.
Even at the end."
I leaned against the wall of a building and looked up at the sky.
"She's going to fight the will," I said.
"I know."
"Do you think she has a case?"
Carol was quiet for a moment.
Then: "That depends on what else she knows.
And there is something else, Sarah.
Something Thomas didn't tell you in the letter.
Something Diane knows and has been sitting on for years." She looked at me directly.
"Thomas didn't just find you by chance.
He hired someone to find you.
A private investigator.
Twelve years ago."
I stared at her.
"He's been watching over you for twelve years," Carol said.
"From a distance.
Making sure you were all right.
He never made contact because he was afraid of disrupting your life.
But he knew where you worked.
He knew about your mother's illness.
He knew everything." She paused.
"Diane found out about the investigator two years ago.
She confronted Thomas.
That was the last time they spoke."
The street felt very quiet suddenly.
"Why are you telling me this?" I asked.
Carol looked at me for a long moment.
"Because Diane's attorney is going to use it," she said.
"They're going to argue that Thomas was obsessed.
That his judgment was compromised.
May you like
That the will was the product of an unhealthy fixation, not a sound mind." She held my gaze.
"And I need you to know the truth before they get to tell you their version of it."
