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.
