Chapter 5: What She Already Knew
I read the paragraph again.
*I heard you became a teacher.
I don't know if that's still true.
Someone who knew your father mentioned it years ago and I held onto it.
I always imagined you'd be good at it — patient, careful, the kind of person who notices the quiet ones in the back of the room.*
I set the letter down.
"Daniel."
He looked up.
"She knew I was a teacher."
"Your dad could have told her that."
"Dad said he only spoke to her once.
For four minutes.
When I was seven." I picked the letter back up.
"I didn't become a teacher until I was twenty-four."
Daniel put his coffee down slowly.
I kept reading.
*I know you have two children.
I know their names are Sophie and Marcus.
I know you live in a house with a blue front door because I drove past it once, two years ago, and then I made myself turn around and go home because I had no right to be there without your permission.*
My hands were steady.
I noticed that.
My hands were completely steady.
"She drove past our house," I said.
"Emma—"
"She knew Sophie and Marcus's names."
Daniel stood up.
He came around the table and sat in the chair beside me, close enough that our arms were touching.
He read the paragraph over my shoulder.
"How did she know their names?" he asked.
"I don't know."
I turned to the second page.
*I want to be honest with you about something.
I didn't only wait.
After your father told me you were healthy and loved, I tried to let go.
I tried for years.
But when you turned thirty, I hired someone to find you.
Not to contact you.
Just to know you were all right.
I know that may feel like a violation.
I understand if it does.
I only wanted to know you were safe.*
I lowered the letter to the table.
The kitchen was very quiet.
"She hired someone," I said.
Daniel didn't answer right away.
"She watched from a distance," I said.
"For years."
"She said she only wanted to know you were safe."
"I know what she said."
I wasn't angry.
I was trying to understand if I should be.
I kept reaching for the anger and finding something else underneath it — something that felt uncomfortably close to recognition.
The way you recognize a feeling you've had yourself but never named.
I thought about every time I'd driven past my father's house in the years after I stopped visiting.
Not stopping.
Just driving past.
Just to see the lights on.
Just to know.
"I need to talk to Dad," I said.
He was awake.
I found him in the guest room, sitting on the edge of the bed, already dressed, like he'd been waiting to be called.
"She hired someone to find me," I said from the doorway.
"Did you know that?"
He looked at his hands.
"She told me.
About a year ago."
"And you didn't think that was something I should know?"
"I thought it would frighten you before you were ready to hear the rest."
"Stop deciding when I'm ready," I said.
It came out harder than I intended.
I didn't take it back.
"You've been deciding that my whole life.
I'm thirty-eight years old."
He flinched.
A small movement.
His shoulders dropped a fraction.
"You're right," he said.
"I know."
I came into the room and sat in the chair by the window.
"Tell me about her," I said.
"Not the facts.
Tell me who she is."
He was quiet for a moment.
Then something in his face softened — not into sadness, but into something older than sadness.
"Her name is Ruth," he said.
"She was nineteen when she had you.
She's fifty-seven now." He paused.
"She teaches piano.
She has a small house.
She never married, though she came close once." Another pause.
"She laughs the same way you do.
I noticed it the one time I met her in person.
Last spring."
I went very still.
"You met her in person."
"She asked to meet me.
She wanted to give me the letter herself." He looked up.
"She wanted to make sure I'd actually give it to you."
"When were you going to tell me that?"
"I'm telling you now."
I looked at him for a long moment.
The man who had kept me out of sight for twenty years.
The man who had carried this for thirty-eight.
The man who was running out of time and knew it.
"She laughs the same way I do," I said.
"The exact same way.
It caught me off guard." His eyes went bright.
"I wasn't expecting it."
I looked out the window at the yard where my kids had been playing the day before.
Sophie's bike was still leaning against the fence.
"I want to meet her," I said.
The words came out before I'd finished deciding them.
But once they were out, they felt true.
Dad reached into his shirt pocket and set a folded piece of paper on the knee of his trousers.
"Her phone number," he said.
"She said whenever you're ready.
Or never.
She meant that too."
I didn't take it yet.
"Does she know Dad is sick?" I asked.
"Yes."
"Is that why the timing—"
"Yes," he said simply.
May you like
"She didn't want you to lose the chance because of me."
I picked up the piece of paper.
