Chapter 6: What Was in the Envelope
Carol sat at the end of the table with her hands folded and let Rowan open the envelope.
He laid the documents out one at a time, slowly, like he had done this before in his mind many times and wanted to get the order right.
The first was a copy of the transfer form from the night Rowan had been moved.
At the bottom, in the signature line for *Parent or Legal Guardian*, was my name.
My handwriting.
Except it wasn't.
I had signed my name thousands of times.
I knew every loop and lean of it.
This was close.
Very close.
But the R curved the wrong way, and the final letter trailed up instead of flat.
"She practiced it," Daniel said.
He wasn't asking.
"Carol thinks so," Rowan said.
"The rest of the forms from that night — the ones the hospital generated — they're consistent with each other.
Only the consent form has that signature."
The second document was a private adoption filing.
Eighteen years old, the paper slightly yellowed at the edges.
Carol's name.
Rowan's name.
A county two states away.
"She didn't know it was fraudulent when she signed it," Carol said quietly.
"The agency she used — I found out later it wasn't a real agency.
It was a single woman operating out of an office.
She's since been investigated for other cases.
But at the time, I was told the birth parents had voluntarily surrendered the child due to medical complexity and financial hardship." She paused.
"I believed it because I wanted to believe it.
I wanted him."
She looked at Rowan when she said it.
He looked back at her with something that was not quite a smile but was close to one.
"The third document," Rowan said.
He placed it on the table.
It was a bank statement.
An account I didn't recognize, in my mother's name.
A deposit of fourteen thousand dollars, dated three weeks after the night Rowan had been transferred.
I stared at it.
"She was paid," Daniel said.
"Carol found the name of the woman who ran the agency," Rowan said.
"She's been building this file for years.
The woman has since died, but there are records.
The payment came from an account connected to the agency.
It went directly to your mother."
The coffee shop was very quiet.
"She sold him," I said.
The words came out flat.
Not a question.
Not an accusation.
Just the fact of it, sitting there on the table next to the bank statement and the forged signature and the adoption filing.
"We don't know her exact reasoning," Carol said carefully.
"I don't care about her reasoning." I heard my own voice from somewhere slightly outside myself.
"She told me my son was d*ad.
She stood next to me at a funeral.
She held my hand." I looked at the bank statement again.
"And she was paid for it."
Daniel put his hand over mine on the table.
"There's one more thing," Rowan said.
He reached into the envelope and pulled out a single folded piece of paper.
He unfolded it and slid it across to me.
It was a letter.
Handwritten.
Dated sixteen years ago.
The handwriting was my mother's.
*If you are reading this, then Carol has told you more than she should have.
I want you to understand that what I did was for the good of this family.
You were not coping.
Daniel was not coping.
A third child with his needs would have destroyed everything you had built.
I made a decision that you were not strong enough to make.
I have never regretted it.
I ask only that you consider, before you do anything, what exposing this will cost everyone involved — including your two healthy sons.*
I read it twice.
Then I folded it back along its crease and set it on the table.
"She wrote this for you," I said to Rowan.
"Carol found it tucked inside the adoption file.
She thinks your mother sent it to the agency to be passed along in case the adoption was ever challenged." He paused.
"Carol kept it."
"Why?" Daniel asked.
Carol looked at him steadily.
"Because I knew that one day he would need to find you.
And I knew you would need to understand that what was done to you was not an accident.
It was a choice." She paused.
"And it was written down."
Outside, a car passed slowly on the wet street.
I looked at my mother's handwriting on that folded letter.
*I have never regretted it.*
"What do you want to do?" Daniel asked me.
I looked at Rowan.
He was watching me with my own eyes.
"First," I said, "I want to take my son home."
Rowan's jaw moved.
He pressed his lips together and nodded once.
"And then?" Daniel asked.
I picked up the letter and placed it back in the envelope with the rest of the documents.
May you like
"Then I'm going to call her," I said.
"And I'm going to give her one chance to tell me the truth herself."
