“He saw Margaret asking nurses for you.”
Clara stared.
Julian’s voice lowered.
“She kept asking why they wouldn't bring her baby back.”
“My father realized she had never agreed.”
“He confronted the attending physician.”
“The attending told him the matter had been handled by family attorneys and he should stay out of it.”
“Did he?”
“For too long.”
Clara laughed once.
Bitter.
“That seems to be a family tradition.”
Julian accepted it.
“Yes.”
“He finally copied records.”
“Kept the photograph.”
“Years later, he tried to find you.”
“Why didn't he go to police?”
“He said he had no proof of where you went.”
“Only that the transfer was irregular.”
“And he was afraid of losing his medical license.”
Clara stared.
“Of course.”
Julian looked ashamed.
“He spent the rest of his life regretting it.”
“That did me a lot of good.”
“No.”
The answer stopped her.
Julian did not defend his father.
“He should have done more.”
Clara looked at him.
“So why are you doing this?”
“Because he asked me to finish what he failed to do.”
“And you agreed?”
“Not immediately.”
That surprised her.
“I was angry with him.”
“For what?”
“For waiting until he was dying to give me responsibility for something he had hidden my entire life.”
Julian sat on the low stone wall.
Not beside her too closely.
“Then I read everything.”
“I saw the hospital notes.”
“Your mother’s letters.”
Clara’s head snapped toward him.
“Letters?”
Julian froze.
She moved closer.
“What letters?”
He looked back toward the garden.
Margaret remained surrounded by trustees and staff.
Caroline stood alone.
Julian reached inside the envelope again.
“There are copies.”
He handed Clara three pages.
The first was dated three weeks after her birth.
To whoever has my daughter,
Clara could not read beyond that.
Her eyes blurred.
She lowered the page.
“She wrote?”
“Yes.”
“How many?”
“My father kept copies of eleven.”
“Eleven?”
“He found them in an attorney file years later.”
Clara stared.
“My records have nothing.”
“I know.”
She forced herself to read.
I have been told I surrendered you. I did not. I have been told I was too ill to remember signing papers. I remember everything. I remember your hair. I remember the way your left hand closed around my finger. I remember the bracelet. I remember telling them your legs did not frighten me.
Clara stopped.
The world broke open quietly.
Not dramatically.
No scream.
No collapse.
Just one sentence entering a place inside her that had been wounded for sixteen years.
Your legs did not frighten me.
She read it again.
Then again.
She covered her mouth.
Julian looked away to give her privacy.
Clara continued.
If someone reads this to you someday, please know I did not decide you were too difficult. I did not look at you and leave. They took you from my room and told me you died. When I learned that may not be true, nobody would tell me where you went.
The letter shook in Clara’s hand.
At the bottom:
I am still looking.
Signed:
Margaret.
Clara lowered the page.
For years she had constructed a woman in her mind.
Cold.
Embarrassed.