Chapter 5: The Other Side of the Line
Melissa left.
Not dramatically.
She picked up her handbag, said she needed some air, and walked out the front door.
We heard her car start.
We heard it pull away.
Mom looked at the phone number on the table.
"She'll come back," I said.
"I know she will." Mom picked up the piece of paper.
"She always does.
That's not the problem.
The problem is what she does before she comes back."
I didn't understand that yet.
I would later.
"Do you want to call him now?" I asked.
"I want to call him before I lose my nerve." She looked at me.
"Will you stay?"
"Of course."
She picked up her phone.
She dialed slowly, reading each digit from the paper, the way people do when they're not sure they want to get to the end of the number.
It rang four times.
I thought it would go to voicemail.
Then someone answered.
"Hello?"
A man's voice.
Unhurried.
A little careful.
"Is this Daniel?" Mom's voice was steady.
I don't know how.
"My name is Ruth.
I was married to a man named George Hartwell.
I think — I believe — you may have received a letter about our family."
Silence on the other end.
Not a confused silence.
A held one.
"Yes," he said.
"I did."
Mom closed her eyes for just a second.
"I'm sorry it took me so long to call," she said.
"I wasn't sure you would."
"I wasn't sure either." She opened her eyes.
"I hope this isn't a bad time."
"No," Daniel said.
"No, it's not a bad time at all.
I've been — I've thought about this call for a while."
"So have I."
A short pause.
Then: "How are you?"
It was such a simple question.
Mom laughed — a small, surprised sound, like she hadn't expected to.
"I'm seventy years old," she said.
"I just had a birthday.
It's been a complicated day."
"I'm sorry to hear that."
"Don't be.
I think it needed to be complicated." She looked at me across the table.
"My daughter is here with me.
Her name is Claire.
She's the one who — she found the photograph.
In a way, she's the reason I'm calling."
I heard Daniel exhale slowly.
"I'm glad," he said.
"I'm really glad."
They talked for forty minutes.
I sat at the table and listened and didn't say a word, because it wasn't my conversation to join.
It was Mom's.
It had always been Mom's, and Melissa had kept it from her for two years, and now Mom was having it, and the sound of her voice as she talked — careful at first, then warmer, then something close to easy — was the most important thing I had heard in a long time.
Daniel lived in Portland.
He was a high school history teacher.
He had two daughters.
He had known about us for eighteen months and had not reached out because he didn't want to force himself on a family that might not want him.
"I didn't want to be a problem," he said.
"You're not a problem," Mom said.
"You never were."
When they hung up, Mom sat quietly for a moment with her phone in her lap.
"He sounds like your father," she said.
"The way he pauses before he answers.
George always did that."
"Is that strange?"
"It's very strange." She set the phone on the table.
"And somehow not strange at all."
My own phone lit up on the table between us.
A text from Melissa.
*I need to talk to you.
Not Mom.
Just you.
Can you come outside?*
I looked at Mom.
"Go," she said.
"I'll be fine."
I found Melissa sitting in her car in the driveway, engine off, handbag still in her lap like she hadn't moved since she sat down.
I got into the passenger seat.
She didn't look at me right away.
"Did she call him?" she said.
"Yes."
"And?"
"It went well."
Melissa nodded slowly.
Her hands tightened on the strap of her bag.
May you like
"I need to tell you something," she said.
"Something I didn't tell Mom."
