Anna opened it.
“She’s alive,” I said. “I found our daughter.”
She froze.
“You found her?”
“Her name is Rebecca.”
“Rebecca?”
“My Rebecca. The daughter Carol and I adopted.”
Anna covered her mouth.
“Oh my God.”
“She has a good life.”
“Family?”
“Two boys.”
Tears filled Anna’s eyes.
“I’m a grandmother.”
“Yes.”
She lowered herself onto the porch step and began to cry.
I sat beside her until she finally wiped her face.
“Does she know about me?”
“No.”
“Are you going to tell her?”
Rebecca had buried Carol only weeks earlier.
Now I had to tell her that the woman she’d known as her mother had hidden the truth about her birth for thirty-eight years.
“I don’t know how.”
Anna looked toward the letters.
“Neither did Carol, apparently.”
“What if it destroys everything Rebecca remembers about her?”
“Walter, your mother decided what I was allowed to know. Carol decided what you were allowed to know.”
I stared at the letters.
“And now I’d be deciding for Rebecca.”
“Yes.”
—
The next morning, I drove to Columbus and placed the letters on Rebecca’s kitchen table.
“Dad, what is this?”
“Something your mother should’ve told us years ago.”
“Us?”
I drew a breath.
“Rebecca, my first love, Anna, is your biological mother. And I’m your biological father.”
She stared at me.
“What are you talking about?”
“Read the letters.”
By the second letter, her hands were trembling.
“Mom knew?”
“Yes.”
Rebecca wiped her eyes.
