Chapter 2 - The Mother I Was Told Had Forgotten Me
I drove to Maine two days later.
Not because I was ready.
Not because I had forgiven anyone.
But because I had spent twenty-six years believing a woman abandoned me, and now I needed to look into her eyes before I allowed anyone else to control the story again.
Daniel gave me the address Carl had left behind.
He also gave me a thick file containing court records, letters, medical documents, and photographs.
I did not open it until I was parked outside a small blue house near the ocean.
The house had white shutters, a narrow porch, and pots of dying lavender near the steps. Wind pushed clouds across the gray sky. Somewhere beyond the houses, waves broke against the shore.
I sat in my car for almost twenty minutes.
Then the front door opened.
A woman stepped onto the porch.
She was in her early fifties, maybe older. Her hair was silver at the temples and tied loosely behind her neck. She wore a faded green sweater, jeans, and no shoes.
For one second, she simply stood there.
Then her hand rose to her mouth.
“Anna?”
I could not move.
She came down the steps slowly, as if she was afraid I would disappear if she moved too quickly.
“Anna,” she whispered again.
I opened the car door.
The woman stopped several feet away.
Her eyes were blue.
My eyes were blue too.
I had always been told they came from my father, a man whose name Aunt Margaret never spoke.
But when I looked at Elise Reed, I knew immediately.
They came from her.
“You’re alive,” I said.
Her face crumpled.
“Yes.”
“You knew where I was?”
“Yes.”
“You let me believe you abandoned me.”
“No.” She shook her head quickly. “No, sweetheart. Never. I tried to find you. I tried for years.”
“Then why didn’t you?”
Elise closed her eyes.
“Because Margaret made everyone believe I was dangerous.”
The words came out quietly, but every one of them hurt.
She invited me inside.
I almost refused.
Then I saw a photograph through the window.
A little girl in a yellow raincoat sat on a beach, holding a red shovel.
I recognized the face.
Mine.
I walked into the house.
The living room was small, warm, and filled with evidence of a life built around someone who was missing.
Photographs covered one wall.
Not random photographs.
Photographs of me.
A preschool picture.
A school photograph from third grade.
A newspaper clipping about a scholarship I won in high school.
A picture from my college graduation that I had never seen taken.
My knees weakened.
“You followed me.”
Elise’s eyes filled with tears.
“From a distance.”
“Why?”
“I was afraid Margaret would take you farther away if she knew I was watching.”
I turned toward her.
“You could have come to me.”
“I tried.”
She walked to a small wooden cabinet and opened a drawer.
Inside was a stack of returned letters.
Every envelope was addressed to me.
Anna Reed.
Care of Margaret Reed.
Some were marked RETURN TO SENDER.
Others had never been opened.
I picked one up.
The handwriting on the front was trembling.
The date was from my tenth birthday.
I opened it carefully.
My sweet Anna,
I do not know if this letter will reach you, but I need you to know I think of you every day. I have not forgotten you. I could never forget you.
I am still fighting.
Love always,
Mom
My vision blurred.
Elise sat across from me, twisting her hands together.
“Margaret told the court I had abandoned you. She said I had a drinking problem. She said I was unstable after you were born.”
“Was that true?”
Elise looked at me.
“I was depressed. I was scared. I needed help.” Her voice trembled. “But I was not dangerous. I never stopped loving you.”
I sat in silence.
There was no clean way to receive a truth like that.
Part of me wanted to run.
Part of me wanted to scream.
Part of me wanted to ask why she had not fought harder.
But another part of me saw the returned letters, the photographs, and the room she had built around the hope of me.
“What happened to Carl?” I finally asked.
Elise’s face changed.
“Carl?”
“He said he was your best friend.”
She looked toward the window.
“He was.”
“Then why did he let Aunt Margaret take me?”
Elise began crying quietly.
“Because he was afraid.”
I waited.
“He had been involved with people who used him,” she said. “He had debts. He had made mistakes when he was younger. Margaret knew about them. She told him that if he helped me, she would expose him and make sure he went to prison.”
“So he chose himself.”
“Yes.”
The honesty was brutal.
“He tried to help later,” Elise continued. “Years later, he found me. He told me he had been sick with guilt. He said he wanted to find you.”
“And you let him?”
“I told him no.”
That surprised me.
“He said he wanted to make things right. But I told him he did not get to enter your life unless he told you the truth first.”
I thought of Carl asking me to marry him.
I thought of his tears.
I thought of the way I had mistaken a strange connection for fate.
“He did not tell me,” I said.
Elise looked down.
“No.”
“He made me his wife.”
“I did not know that.”
“He told me it was his final wish.”
Elise’s face went pale.
“He what?”
I laughed bitterly.
“I agreed because I thought I was giving a dying man peace.”
My mother covered her mouth.
“He manipulated you.”
The word settled in the room.
Manipulated.
Not romance.
Not destiny.
Not a sad, beautiful final wish.
Manipulation.
Carl had been sick.
Carl had been lonely.
Carl had probably regretted what he did.
But regret did not make his choices harmless.
He knew who I was.
He knew I had spent my life craving belonging.
And he used that wound to pull me close without giving me the truth I needed to consent freely.
My mother reached toward me, then stopped.
She did not touch me.
“Anna,” she said softly, “I am so sorry.”
I looked at her.
May you like
For the first time in my life, someone apologized to me without asking me to make them feel better afterward.
And that was when I began to cry.
