Chapter 5: The People Who Knew
"My mother," Claire said.
Ronnie closed her eyes briefly.
"Grandma Ruth knew."
"She was with me when Diane went into the hospital.
She helped me bring you home."
"Does she know I don't know?"
"Yes."
Ronnie sat back down.
She pulled the adoption certificate across the table and looked at it again, slowly, the way you read something a second time hoping the words will change.
"Anyone else?" I asked.
"Our family doctor.
Dr.
Parrish.
He signed the paperwork." Claire paused.
"He retired four years ago."
"That's it?"
"That's it."
Ronnie set the document down.
"So Grandma Ruth has been sitting across from me at Christmas dinner for eighteen years knowing I didn't know."
"She wanted to tell you.
She asked me more than once."
"But you said no."
"Yes."
Ronnie nodded slowly.
Not forgiving.
Just absorbing.
I looked at Marcus.
"What do you want?"
He didn't flinch from the question.
"Nothing that isn't already hers.
I'm not here to be her father.
I understand that position is taken." He glanced at Ronnie.
"I came because I promised Diane I would show up when the time came.
Just once.
So Ronnie could decide for herself if she wanted to know where she came from."
"And if I don't?" Ronnie said.
"Then I get back in my car and you never hear from me again."
Ronnie looked at him for a long moment.
"Did you love her?
My biological mother?"
Marcus was quiet.
"I was twenty-six and stupid," he said finally.
"I cared about her more than I understood at the time.
I've spent a lot of years being sorry I didn't understand it sooner."
Ronnie absorbed that.
Outside, I could hear the birthday guests still moving around the backyard.
Music had started — someone had turned on the speaker we'd set up that morning.
The sound felt like it was coming from a different day entirely.
"I need to call Grandma Ruth," Ronnie said.
"Ronnie—" Claire started.
"I'm not asking permission." She picked up her phone from the table and walked out of the kitchen.
We heard her footsteps on the stairs.
Then a door closing.
The three of us sat in the kitchen without speaking.
Marcus stood.
"I should go."
"Not yet," I said.
He sat back down.
I looked at Claire.
"Is there anything else?
Anything you haven't said."
She hesitated.
My stomach dropped.
"Claire."
"There's a letter," she said.
"From Diane.
She wrote it in the hospital.
She asked me to give it to Ronnie when she turned eighteen." Claire stood and walked to the cabinet above the refrigerator.
She reached to the back and brought down a small wooden box I had never seen before.
She set it on the table.
"I've been carrying it for eighteen years."
I stared at the box.
"You kept that in our house," I said.
"All this time."
"Yes."
From upstairs, we heard Ronnie's voice — muffled, then suddenly sharp.
Then silence.
Then her footsteps, fast, coming back down the stairs.
She appeared in the kitchen doorway.
Her face had changed.
"Grandma Ruth didn't just know," Ronnie said.
"She told me there's something else.
Something about why Mom — why Diane — really d*ed." She looked at Claire.
May you like
"She said it wasn't just complications.
She said you know what really happened."
