Chapter 3: The Document in the Drawer
I stood there with my hand flat against the wall and made myself breathe.
"What do you mean she's not the only one who knows?"
Alan's jaw tightened.
"She thinks someone reached out to her.
Someone who knew about the document before she even found it."
"Who?"
"She wouldn't tell me a name.
She said she needed to talk to you first."
I was already moving toward the door.
Alan didn't stop me this time.
Iris's room was at the end of the hall.
The light under her door was still on.
I knocked twice, softly, the way I always had since she was small.
"Come in."
She was sitting on her bed with her knees pulled to her chest, still dressed.
She'd been waiting.
I sat down beside her.
Neither of us spoke for a moment.
"Alan told me," I said.
She looked at the wall.
"I'm sorry.
I should have come to you myself."
"Don't apologize.
Just talk to me."
She pulled in a breath.
"I found it in March.
I was looking for the stapler — you know how you always put office stuff in that bottom drawer.
I pulled it too hard and the whole thing came out." She paused.
"There was a folder taped to the back."
I knew the folder.
A plain manila envelope, sealed with two strips of tape that had yellowed at the edges.
I had put it there myself, eleven years ago, and I had never once looked at it again.
"What did you think when you saw it?" I asked.
"I didn't open it right away." She finally looked at me.
"I held it for a while.
And then I did."
I waited.
"It was a letter," she said.
"From a woman named Carol Deane."
The name landed like a stone dropped into still water.
I felt the ripple move through me before I could stop it.
"You know that name," Iris said.
It wasn't a question.
"Yes."
"Who is she?"
I had asked myself, for eleven years, how I would answer that question if it ever came.
I had never found the right words.
I still hadn't.
"She's your biological father's sister," I said.
"Your aunt."
Iris went very still.
"I have an aunt."
"You did.
I don't know if she's still — I don't know what her situation is now."
"What did the letter say?"
I looked at my daughter's face.
Seventeen years old.
The same dark eyes she'd had at four, standing in a social worker's office in a coat two sizes too big, holding a stuffed rabbit by one ear.
"She wrote to us six months after we adopted you," I said.
"She said she wanted contact.
She said she had things that belonged to your parents — photographs, a few personal items — and she wanted you to have them when you were old enough."
Iris's voice was very quiet.
"What did you write back?"
The silence stretched between us.
"I didn't," I said.
Her chin dropped.
I watched her process that.
I watched her decide how to feel about it.
"Why?"
"Because I was scared," I said.
"Because you had just started sleeping through the night without waking up screaming.
Because you had just started calling me Mom.
And I was terrified that any contact with your biological family would unravel everything we'd built."
"So you just — didn't answer her."
"I put the letter away and I told myself I'd deal with it when you were older.
And then time passed, and I kept telling myself the same thing, and eventually I stopped thinking about it at all."
Iris was quiet for a long time.
"She contacted me," she said finally.
"In February.
On Instagram.
She said she'd been trying to find me for years."
My chest tightened.
"What did she say?"
"She said she had a box of things that belonged to my parents.
She said she was getting older and she was afraid of what would happen to the box if she — " Iris stopped.
"She said she didn't want it to disappear."
I reached for her hand.
She let me take it.
"She sent me a photograph," Iris said.
"Of my mother.
I'd never seen a photograph of my mother before."
I had no words for that.
I just held her hand tighter.
"Why couldn't you tell me?" I asked.
She turned to look at me.
Her eyes were wet.
"Because every time I tried, I thought about how much you'd given up for me.
How much you and Dad had done.
And I was terrified that if I told you I wanted to know about them — my real family — you'd think it meant you weren't enough."
"Oh, Iris."
"I know it doesn't make sense."
"It makes complete sense." I pulled her close.
"It makes complete sense, and I'm so sorry you carried that alone."
She leaned into me, and for a moment neither of us moved.
Then she pulled back slightly.
"There's something else."
I waited.
"Carol said in her last message that she wasn't the only one who'd been looking for me." Iris's voice had changed — quieter, more careful.
"She said there's someone else.
Someone who has a very different reason for wanting to find me."
The room felt colder.
"Did she say who?"
Iris shook her head.
May you like
"She said she'd explain everything if we met in person.
She said it was safer that way."
