Chapter 3 - The Promise Thomas Should Never Have Made
Florence’s little white house still smelled like lavender furniture polish and burnt toast.
Lillian sat at the kitchen table with a cardboard folder in front of her. She had taken off her coat. Without it, she looked younger, and that made the lost years feel even crueler.
Thomas stopped in the doorway.
“I can wait outside.”
“No,” I said.
Lillian looked between us.
“You two are fighting because of me.”
“We’re fighting because he lied,” I replied.
Thomas accepted that without argument.
Lillian slid a letter across the table.
The stationery had my mother’s initials embossed at the top.
Janet,
Claire has built a new life and does not wish to reopen an unfortunate chapter. Please honor her request and do not contact her again.
Vivian Hale.
I read it twice.
Then a third time.
“I didn’t even know your adoptive mother’s name.”
“I believe you.”
“You shouldn’t have to.”
Lillian gave a sad half-smile. “I’ve spent most of my life believing people who turned out to be wrong.”
Thomas leaned against the counter.
That was when I turned on him.
“Tell me everything. No editing.”
He exhaled.
“Florence called me May nineteenth.”
“Why you?”
“She said she had tried calling you twice and hung up both times.”
“That sounds like Florence.”
“She was terrified. She told me she had found documents while helping Vivian move things into storage. She thought Lily might be alive.”
Lillian corrected him softly. “Lillian.”
Thomas nodded. “Lillian.”
He continued.
“Florence asked me to find out before telling you. I told her that was a terrible idea.”
“But you did it anyway.”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
He looked at me for a long moment.
“Because I remembered what happened after your miscarriage twelve years ago.”
I went still.
We had lost a pregnancy at ten weeks. I had spent months walking around as if my skin had been removed.
Thomas’s voice softened.
“You blamed yourself for something that wasn’t your fault. I thought if Florence was confused, and I told you there was a chance Lily had lived, then took that hope away…”
“So you decided for me.”
“Yes.”
The honesty made me angrier.
“You decided what truth I could survive.”
“Yes.”
Lillian looked down.
Thomas rubbed both hands over his face.
“I found the genealogy profile Florence mentioned. I messaged Lillian. She thought I was a scammer.”
“I still do a little,” Lillian said.
Despite myself, I almost smiled.
Thomas did too, but only briefly.
“We arranged a DNA test through a private lab. Florence provided a sample. The match showed they were close family. Then Florence got sicker. She asked me not to tell Claire until Lillian was ready.”
I looked at Lillian.
“Were you?”
“No.”
That answer hurt, but I respected it.
“Why?”
“Because I was angry at you.”
“For giving you away.”
“Yes.”
I swallowed.
Lillian touched the edge of the folder.
“My parents were good to me. Really good. But my mom never lied about the fact that I was adopted. When I turned eighteen, she gave me everything she had. The paperwork said you relinquished me. Then there was your mother’s letter when I was twelve. I thought you had been asked twice and said no twice.”
“I’m sorry.”
“You didn’t do it.”
“I’m sorry you carried it anyway.”
Her eyes filled.
For the first time, she did not look away.
Thomas cleared his throat.
“There’s one more thing.”
I turned slowly.
“Of course there is.”
He looked miserable.
“I haven’t been going to Hartford for work.”
My stomach sank.
“What?”
“The company cut my position three weeks ago.”
Lillian’s head snapped toward him.
“You didn’t tell her that either?”
“No.”
I laughed in disbelief.
He continued quickly. “I have severance. We’re not broke. I’ve been interviewing. But I was ashamed.”
“So yesterday’s ‘emergency site meeting’…”
“Didn’t exist.”
“And the money above the refrigerator?”
He looked at the floor.
“I used some for the DNA tests and travel. Some for Florence’s legal consultation. The roses were six hundred and twenty dollars.”
I stared at him.
“You spent our emergency fund on a secret investigation into my own child while hiding that you lost your job.”
“When you say it like that—”
“How else is there to say it?”
He had no answer.
Lillian rose.
“I’m going to Florence’s bedroom. You two need to have the fight you’ve been postponing since May.”
She disappeared down the hall.
Thomas and I stood in the kitchen where my aunt had served us Thanksgiving pie for twenty years.
“I thought I was protecting you,” he said.
“I know.”
“That doesn’t make it right.”
“No.”
“I’m sorry.”
I stared at him.
“Do you know what scared me most when I saw you with her?”
He shook his head.
“I thought you had another woman. And for ten minutes I believed twenty-seven years could be fake.”
His face broke.
“Claire—”
“Then I found out it wasn’t fake. But you were still lying. Just about different things.”
He looked as if I had struck him.
“I need you to leave the house when we get home,” I said.
His mouth opened.
“For how long?”
“I don’t know.”
He nodded slowly.
“I’ll go.”
Before either of us could speak again, Lillian called from the hallway.
“Claire?”
I found her kneeling beside Florence’s bed with a loose floorboard pulled up.
Under it was a small metal cashbox.
Inside were forty-two unopened letters.
Every envelope was addressed to Claire Donovan.
Every return address belonged to Janet Carter.
My daughter’s adoptive mother had been trying to reach me for twenty-two years.
May you like
I picked up the oldest envelope and held it to the light. The stamp cost thirty-two cents. I remembered that year because Thomas and I had just bought our first house and argued for three weeks about whether we could afford curtains. Somewhere in another state, a woman I had never met had been writing to tell me what my daughter liked for breakfast. I had been choosing curtain rods while a whole life was trying to reach me through the mail.
And someone had hidden every single letter under my aunt’s floor.
