Chapter 3: What Carol Left Behind
The nurse's name was Diane.
She had kind eyes and the careful manner of someone who had delivered bad news enough times to know how to stand still while other people fell apart.
"She's not saying a word," Diane said.
"She's three hours old.
I only meant — there's a letter.
Left with the admission paperwork.
It has a name on the envelope."
She held it out.
My name.
Written in Carol's handwriting.
James hadn't seen it yet.
I could tell by the way his eyes went to it and then quickly away, the way a person looks at something they're afraid of.
"When did she write this?" I asked.
"We don't know," Diane said.
"It came in with her bag.
She must have packed it before she came in."
I turned the envelope over.
It hadn't been opened.
The seal was intact.
Carol had licked it herself, pressed it shut herself, written my name herself — and then gone into that delivery room and not come back out.
"I'll give you some privacy," Diane said, and she went back through the door.
James and I sat in that corridor for a moment without speaking.
"Did you know she had my name?" I asked.
"No."
"James."
"I didn't know, Rachel.
I promise you I didn't know."
I believed him.
That was the strangest part — I believed him completely, and it still didn't explain anything.
I opened the envelope.
Carol's handwriting was the same as it had always been.
Small and slightly left-leaning, the way it had been on birthday cards she'd sent in the early years, before the argument, before the silence.
*Rachel,*
*I know you have no reason to read past this line.
I know what I walked away from.
I'm not asking you to forgive me for that.*
*I'm asking you to do something I have no right to ask.*
*I've been alone for most of this pregnancy.
I made choices I can't undo.
The father is not someone who will come.
I've accepted that.*
*But I've thought about my daughter every day for nine months, and the only home I can picture her in is yours.*
*You always wanted a girl.
James told me that once, years ago, before everything went wrong between us.
He said you had a name picked out.
He said you'd been carrying it since you were nineteen.*
*I don't know if that's still true.
I don't know if you still want her.*
*But I'm asking you to hold her before you decide.*
*Her name, if she doesn't already have one, is up to you.*
*I'm sorry for all of it.
I'm sorry I wasn't better.*
*— Carol*
I folded the letter.
My hands were not shaking.
I don't know why.
Everything else in me was.
James was watching me.
"She knew," I said.
"She planned this."
"She was desperate," he said.
"That's not the same thing."
"It might be."
He didn't argue.
He just waited.
I looked through the glass again.
The bassinet was still there.
A nurse was moving around it, adjusting something I couldn't see.
"She's asking us to take her," I said.
"Yes."
"A newborn.
James, we have three boys.
Our house is — we don't have a room.
We don't have —"
"I know."
"You kept that box."
He was quiet for a long moment.
"I kept it because I couldn't let go of the idea of her," he said.
"Our daughter.
The one we couldn't have.
I kept it because getting rid of it felt like giving up on something I wasn't ready to give up on."
He stopped.
His jaw tightened.
"I didn't know Carol was pregnant.
But maybe some part of me knew that box wasn't finished yet."
I looked at my husband.
Eleven years.
Three boys.
A doctor's voice saying *probably* in a small office while we both held very still.
"I want to hold her," I said.
May you like
James stood up.
He knocked on the glass.
