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Like Marnie had said, the lock on the box had been damaged and I shook nervously as I flipped open the lid. Inside were an assortment of envelopes, mainly white, and as I flipped through them. I saw postmarks from Baltimore, Tennessee, Ohio, and Michigan; all the places Erin herself had told me she’d lived. The first was dated April twenty-second, six days after I’d given birth and the last had been a couple of years before Erin had gotten in touch with Marnie.
My fingers shook as I fumbled with the slit opening in the envelope and pulled out the first. It was a picture of the baby girl I had given birth to. As I studied her face properly for the first time, tears blurred my vision and a sob tore from my throat. This was the image of my baby I’d never gotten to see.
The photo triggered my mind and immediately took me back to that time, to that horrible room with all those stern-looking faces that had stood around me. They had remained far more vivid than that briefest partial glimpse I’d had of my baby. Until I saw the picture I had held in my hand, Erin had only been a badly angled snapshot from a devastating moment in time.
Hazel eyes? I had always pictured Erin in my mind with hazel eyes, but they were blue in the picture. I thought to our meeting and knew that she indeed had hazel eyes. Weird how I must have presumed that fact because Donnie had had hazel eyes. Strange how my mind had been tricked.
I opened the note that came with the picture. It had been written on cheap notebook paper.
Hey, Alison and John here. As promised here is a snapshot of Erin, taken at six days old. She is a good baby, not fussy like some, and she sleeps for nine hours straight in the night. We think ourselves extremely lucky to have been blessed with this miracle, but to have her sleep most of the night as well is a bonus. She is a very sweet baby and has quickly become the light of our lives.
Alison and John.
“The note wasn’t addressed to anyone and had a post office box number on the front. Were these addressed to Mom, but really meant for me? Was I supposed to have had them as she grew up? If that was the case, I’ve spent years wondering, when Mom could have put me out of my misery.”
“May I?” James asked, pointing at the box.
“Please, or I’ll never get through them before Marnie goes home,” I replied.
“Do you want to keep going forward and I’ll scan them and work backward?” he asked.
“Yeah, that’s a great idea. I’ll want to read them again and again, and Marnie needs to take them back.”
James sat quietly and sifted through the letters without comment, reading and scanning them into his laptop via his handheld scanner and wireless printer.
Meanwhile I had continued absorbing the images and letters, which had read like a chronological timeline from Erin’s birth to her high school prom.
“Well?” I asked, prompting James to give me his thoughts. James smiled and placed his laptop on the end table by his side.
“Lots of lovely pictures, including her graduation from high school, graduation with a BA honors in math, an MBA in Business and Finance, and the last letter documents the death of Erin’s adoptive father from kidney failure. None of the letters mention any names apart from theirs, so I’m not sure that your dad can conclusively connect the dots from these alone,” he remarked. “But with the photographs of Erin …” He trailed off leaving the words unsaid that Erin had such a likeness to me it would be difficult for my father to look at those and not to see me in her.
Dad wasn’t stupid and I knew if he had put his mind to the date of that first letter and thought back on it, he would have realized very quickly my mom and I had gone to New York for a couple of weeks around the time that little one had been born.
“Okay, let him read the letters, Marnie. If he starts to connect the dots out loud, call me and I’ll be there to talk to him. It’s going to come out, but if Dad was as controlled as the rest of us were by her, he’ll understand I had no say in the matter.”
I felt sick watching Marnie take the letters back to his house. I had wanted to keep them so badly, but I knew my dad might have asked where they’d gone and possibly missed them. James sent me all the letters in an email zip file. However, I still begged Marnie to try to keep them safe.
* * *
All that week I had anticipated a call from my dad at any moment, practicing what I’d say, but his call never came. On Friday morning, James arrived at my home in New Jersey. He hadn’t been expected until later that evening as usual.
“What a lovely surprise. Do you have a day off?”
“Four days,” he replied, moving toward me with a smug grin on his face. Sliding his hands into my hair, he closed the space between us and gave me a bone-melting kiss. In those moments we were both lost, passionate and needy, yet at peace because we were touching one another. “Now that’s what I call a welcome home kiss,” he muttered seductively as we both stared intently, a little breathless at the other.
Clearing his throat, he looked like a man trying to put himself back together. “Pack your shit up, baby. We’re heading back to New York. The suspense of waiting for your dad to confront you is giving me heartburn. I can’t do much about him or his timing if he figures what’s up, but I can do something to take your mind off of it while we wait.”
“I’m not really up to going out for the day —”
“Yes, you are. Confession time, I’d arranged something before your mom died. We’ve got my dad’s company bird for a few days and we’re heading up to Vermont. And, before you say no, Erin and her boyfriend have been invited as well.”
“Her boyfriend?”
“Yeah, he’s a recent addition, their relationship is weeks rather than months old. She didn’t mention him before because it was very new, but she sounds like she’s in love.”
“And you know this how?”
“Originally I had planned a helicopter trip for just the two of us. I guess I figured we could both use a change of scenery, but as there are six seats in the helicopter. I thought it may be nice to take Erin as well … that’s when I found out about the boyfriend.”
