Chapter 4: One More
I read the four words twice.
*There is one more.*
"Michael." My voice came out very quiet.
"What does she mean, one more?"
He was already watching me.
Like he'd been waiting for me to reach that page.
"Read the rest," he said.
*You had a sister.*
I put the letter down.
I picked it up again.
*She was born fourteen months before you.
I was twenty-three years old and your father and I were not yet married.
His family — you know what his family was like.
They made it very clear that keeping the baby was not something they would allow.
I was young.
I was frightened.
I didn't have anyone in my corner.*
*I gave her up.*
*I have thought about her every single day of my life since.*
*Her name — the name I gave her before I signed the papers — was Ruth.*
I set the letter on the table.
I didn't say anything for a long time.
"Did you know about this?" I asked Michael.
"About Ruth?"
"Your mom told me when she gave me the letter."
"So you've known for five years that I have a sister."
"I've known for five years that your mother gave up a baby," he said carefully.
"Whether she's still alive, whether she ever looked for your mom — I don't know any of that."
"But you knew."
"I knew."
I stood up.
I walked to the kitchen window and looked out at the backyard.
The garden my mother had helped me plant the spring after we moved in.
The rose bush along the fence that she had chosen herself, that came back every year without any help from me.
"Why didn't she tell me herself?" My voice cracked on the last word.
"She had years.
She had so many years."
"She was ashamed," Michael said.
"Not of Ruth.
Never of Ruth.
She was ashamed that she hadn't been strong enough to fight for her."
"She was twenty-three years old."
"I know."
"She was twenty-three and alone and his family—" I stopped.
"She had no one."
"I know."
I turned around.
"There's a name in that letter," I said.
"Ruth.
She named her Ruth.
That means she held her.
You don't name a baby you never held."
Michael's eyes were wet again.
"Read the last paragraph."
I went back to the table.
Picked up the second page.
*I hired someone to look for her, twelve years ago.
I didn't tell your father.
The investigator found records that suggested she had been adopted by a family in Ohio.
He found a woman of the right age with the right birth date.
But I lost my nerve.
I paid him and I told him to stop.*
*I have her last known address in the envelope.*
I looked inside the envelope.
A small index card.
A name and an address in Columbus, Ohio, written in my mother's handwriting.
*Ruth Callahan.
4417 Mercer Drive.*
Below the address, one final line.
*I never stopped loving her.
I never stopped loving you.
I'm sorry I wasn't braver.
I hope you can be braver than I was.*
*All my love,*
*Mom*
I folded both pages.
Slid them back into the envelope.
Set the index card on top of the ultrasound photographs.
Michael hadn't moved.
"She could have moved," I said.
"That address is over twelve years old."
"She could have."
"She might not want to be found."
"She might not."
I looked at the index card.
At the name written in my mother's careful cursive.
*Ruth Callahan.*
"I have a sister," I said.
It was the first time I had said it out loud.
Michael stood up slowly and came around the table.
He didn't say anything.
He put his arms around me and I let him, and I stood there in my kitchen surrounded by twelve ultrasound photographs and a dead woman's secrets and I cried in a way I hadn't cried since the day we buried her.
When I finally pulled back, I looked at the index card again.
"I need to know if she's real," I said.
"I need to know if she's there."
"I know," Michael said.
"Will you help me?"
"I've been waiting five years for you to ask me that."
I picked up the index card.
And then my phone rang.
I almost didn't look at it.
But the name on the screen stopped me cold.
May you like
It was my mother's oldest friend, Diane — a woman I hadn't spoken to in over two years.
The call that I almost sent to voicemail was the one that changed everything.
