Chapter 5: Everything She Wrote
My name on the envelope was written in blue ink, slightly uneven, like the hand that wrote it had not been entirely steady.
I turned it over.
The seal was intact.
Claire stood up from her chair.
"I can wait outside."
"Stay," I said.
I wasn't sure why.
Maybe I just didn't want to be alone when I opened it.
I broke the seal.
There were four pages inside, handwritten on plain white paper.
I unfolded them slowly.
*Dear Ethan,*
*I have started this letter eleven times.
I keep stopping because I don't know how to explain twenty-five years in a way that won't sound like an excuse.
So I'm going to stop trying to explain and just tell you what happened.*
*My name is Diane Calloway.
I am your mother.
I was twenty-two years old when you were born, and I loved you from the moment I knew you existed.*
*I did not choose to give you up.
I want you to know that first, before anything else.
A man named Gerald Marsh took that choice away from me.
He had power over my life in ways I didn't fully understand until it was too late, and by the time I understood, you were already gone.*
*I spent years trying to find you.
The adoption was sealed.
Gerald had made certain of that.
I hired two different people to help me search, and both times I hit the same wall.
His name was on documents I couldn't access.
His connections reached further than I could follow.*
*Then Ruth found me.*
I looked up at Ruth.
She was watching me read, her hands still on the blanket.
"She found you," I said.
"I retired four years ago," Ruth said.
"I had more time to think.
More time to feel what I had done by staying quiet." She nodded toward the letter.
"Keep reading."
I looked back down.
*Ruth told me she had found a way to reach you.
I didn't ask how.
I was afraid that if I asked too many questions, the chance would disappear.
She told me about Claire — that she trusted her, that Claire was kind, that she would find a way to get close to you without frightening you.
I know how that sounds.
I know it looks like we planned you.
But Ethan — we were desperate.
Ruth is dying.
I have been sick too, though not the same way.
We were running out of time.*
*I need you to know one more thing.*
*Gerald Marsh is still alive.
He is seventy-one years old.
He lives in the same city as you.
And what he did to me — he did not only do to me.*
*There is a folder.
Ruth has it.
Inside that folder is everything I have spent the last four years collecting.
Documents.
Records.
Names of other women he did the same thing to.
At least three others that I know of, possibly more.*
*I am not asking you to do anything with it.
I am not asking you to fight a battle you didn't start.
But I needed you to know the truth.
And I needed someone else to know it too, in case something happens to me before I can tell it myself.*
*I don't know if you will want to meet me after this.
I would understand if you didn't.
But I am still here, Ethan.
I have always been here.*
*I love you.
I have loved you every single day.*
*— Diane*
I set the last page down on my knee.
I didn't move for a moment.
Claire's hand came to rest on the arm of my chair.
She didn't say anything.
She just left it there.
"The folder," I said.
My voice came out steadier than I felt.
"Where is it?"
Ruth reached under the bed.
She pulled out a manila folder, thick with papers, and held it out to me.
I opened it.
The first page was a hospital record from St.
Agatha's, dated the year I was born.
Gerald Marsh's signature was at the bottom.
Below his name, a title: *Director of Patient Services.*
The second page was a legal document.
An adoption consent form.
My mother's signature was at the bottom — but beside it, in the margin, in handwriting I now recognized as Diane's, were four words written so small I almost missed them.
*I did not consent.*
I turned to the third page.
Another name.
Another hospital record.
Another woman.
Another year.
"How many?" I asked.
"Four that we can prove," Ruth said.
"Gerald was careful.
But he wasn't careful enough."
I closed the folder.
Outside the window, the hospice grounds were dark and completely still.
Somewhere down the corridor, a door opened and closed.
"Where is my mother right now?" I asked.
May you like
Ruth looked at me for a long moment.
"She's been in the waiting room," she said, "for the last two hours."
