Chapter 4: The Name That Was Never Spoken
Three days later, Caitlyn went home.
Not to Bennett Street.
To a woman named Carol who had a yellow kitchen and a dog that slept under the table.
Ruth had arranged it.
She called it "a short stay while things get sorted." Caitlyn's mother had signed something at the hospital.
Caitlyn didn't know what.
She didn't ask.
Carol gave her a room with a window that looked out over a garden.
The window didn't lock.
Caitlyn checked.
On the fourth morning, Ruth came back.
She sat across from Caitlyn at Carol's kitchen table with a folder in her hands and a coffee she didn't drink.
"I want to ask you about something," Ruth said.
"And I need you to tell me the truth, even if it feels strange.
Can you do that?"
"Yes."
"The name on that paper.
We looked into it." Ruth opened the folder but kept it angled away.
"His name is Daniel Marsh.
Does that mean anything to you?"
Caitlyn said it silently to herself.
Daniel Marsh.
"No."
"He lived in your town until about eight years ago.
Before you were born." Ruth paused.
"Caitlyn, do you know anything about how you came to live with your mother?
Anything she ever told you about when you were a baby?"
"She said I was early.
That I almost didn't make it." Caitlyn looked at the table.
"She said that a lot."
"Did she say it like she was worried about you?
Or like something else?"
Caitlyn thought about the exact tone.
The way her mother said it — not soft, not frightened.
More like a reminder.
Like a door being held open just enough to show what was on the other side before it swung shut again.
"Like something else," Caitlyn said.
Ruth nodded slowly.
"Okay." She closed the folder.
"I'm going to be honest with you, because I think you deserve that.
We're still finding things out.
But there are some questions about your mother's history that we need to answer before we can decide what comes next."
"Questions about whether she's my real mother?"
Ruth didn't flinch.
"Yes."
Caitlyn had known the question was coming since the night she read the paper.
She had turned it over in her mind every night at Carol's, lying in the room with the unlocked window.
She had expected it to feel like falling.
It didn't.
It felt like a word she had always known the shape of finally being said out loud.
"What happens if she's not?" Caitlyn asked.
"Then we look for who is."
"And if they don't want me either?"
Ruth reached across the table and put her hand over Caitlyn's.
Not quickly.
Carefully, the way you approach something that has learned to flinch.
"Then we keep looking," Ruth said.
"Until we find someone who does."
Carol's dog pushed its nose against Caitlyn's knee under the table.
She put her hand on its head without thinking.
Two weeks passed.
Ruth came back on a Tuesday with a different folder and a man Caitlyn didn't recognize — younger, with a tie that was slightly crooked, like he had straightened it in the car and gotten it wrong.
"This is Mr.
Aldren," Ruth said.
"He's a solicitor.
He helps with family cases."
Mr.
Aldren sat down and opened his folder with the careful movements of someone who had learned to go slowly in rooms with children.
"Caitlyn," he said, "we've been in contact with Daniel Marsh."
The name landed differently now that it had a face attached to it in her mind, even an imaginary one.
"He's agreed to a DNA test," Mr.
Aldren said.
"He wants to."
"Does he know about me?"
Mr.
Aldren and Ruth exchanged a look that lasted less than a second.
"He says he didn't," Mr.
Aldren said carefully.
"He says he was told you didn't survive."
The dog shifted under the table.
Carol, standing at the counter with her back turned, went very still.
Caitlyn looked at the crooked tie.
"She told him I d*ed?" she said.
May you like
Nobody answered right away.
They didn't need to.
