Neither of us spoke for several seconds.
I could hear a faint television somewhere behind Anna, turned low enough that I could not make out the program. There was also a clock. I could hear that clearly, a slow mechanical tick marking every second I failed to find something intelligent to say.
“Anna,” I said again.
“I heard you.”
Her voice was older, of course. So was mine. Forty years had settled into both of us. But underneath the rasp and caution, I could still hear the young woman who once laughed at my burnt hamburgers and sang badly whenever we drove anywhere.
I pressed my palm flat against the kitchen table.
“I didn’t know if this number was still yours.”
“It is.”
“Margaret gave it to me.”
Another pause.
“I figured she might.”
That surprised me. “You knew I called her?”
“She called me immediately afterward.”
I looked at the yellow notepad where I had written Margaret’s number.
“What did she tell you?”
“That Carol died.”
Anna said Carol’s name gently.
There was no uncertainty in it.
No confusion about who I meant.
I sat straighter.
“You knew Carol.”
Anna inhaled.
“I knew of her.”
“That isn’t what I asked.”
“No.”
I waited.
She did not elaborate.
Outside, the first delivery truck of the morning rattled down Maple Street. Somewhere across the road, a dog barked twice.
“Carol asked me to find you,” I said.
“I know.”
My fingers tightened around the phone.
“How do you know?”
“Margaret told me what you told her.”
“No. You said that before I explained it.”
Silence.
“Anna.”
Her voice became quieter. “I assumed.”
“You assumed my dying wife would ask me to call the woman I was engaged to before I met her?”
“When you say it like that, it sounds ridiculous.”
“It sounds ridiculous any way I say it.”
A soft breath escaped her. Not quite laughter.
For one instant, I remembered sitting beside her on the hood of my old Chevrolet after midnight, both of us whispering so we wouldn’t wake her parents.
The memory vanished as quickly as it appeared.
“I need to ask you something,” I said.
“I imagine you have more than one question.”
“My mother came to see you before you left.”
Anna stopped breathing for a second.
Diane had told the truth.
I closed my eyes.
“Didn’t she?”
“Yes.”
The word was almost inaudible.
“What did she say?”
“Walter.”
“I have spent forty-one years believing you changed your mind.”
“I know.”
“You wrote me a letter saying you didn’t want our life.”
“I know.”
“You asked me not to look for you.”
“I know.”
Anger rose despite every promise I had made myself to remain calm.
“Then stop telling me you know.”
The silence afterward was immediate and painful.
I regretted the sharpness but not the question.
Anna spoke first.
“You have a right to be angry.”
“That isn’t what I want.”
“What do you want?”
“The truth.”
“You say that now.”
“What is that supposed to mean?”
“It means truth has consequences, Walt.”
The shortened version of my name hit me harder than it should have.
Carol called me Walter when she was serious.
Rebecca called me Dad.
Almost nobody had called me Walt in decades.
Anna always had.
I stood and walked toward the kitchen window.
“Carol asked me to find you because she said I would understand something.”
Anna said nothing.
“She asked me to forgive her.”
Still nothing.
“Diane knew Carol’s name.”
“Yes.”
“My mother’s name was written in Rebecca’s adoption papers.”
Anna inhaled sharply.
There it was again.
Rebecca.
I turned from the window as though Anna could somehow see my face.
“What?”
“Nothing.”
“No. Not nothing.”
“I didn’t say anything.”
“You reacted.”
“I wasn’t expecting you to say her name.”
“My daughter’s?”
“Yes.”
“You know Rebecca?”
Another silence.
My pulse began pounding in my ears.
“Anna.”
“I know about her.”
Every instinct in me sharpened.
“How?”
“I’ve seen photographs.”
My mouth went dry.
“What photographs?”
“Walter—”
“What photographs?”
“Please don’t raise your voice.”
“I’m sorry.”
I lowered it, though my heart was hammering.
“How have you seen photographs of my daughter?”
Anna took a long breath.
“There are things that can’t be explained over the telephone.”
“People keep telling me that.”
“I understand.”
“No, I don’t think you do.”
“I understand more than you think.”
“Then help me.”
The ticking clock behind her continued.
Tick.
Tick.
Tick.
“Where are you?” I asked.
“Pennsylvania.”
“Where?”
She hesitated.
“Near Erie.”
That was nearly six hours away by car.
“I’ll come.”
“No.”
The refusal was immediate.
“Anna.”
“You shouldn’t.”
“My wife’s last request was for me to find you.”
“You found me.”
“That is not what she meant.”
“You don’t know that.”
“I knew Carol thirty-six years.”
Anna’s response came quickly. “I knew her longer.”
Everything in me went cold.
“What?”
The silence that followed was different from the others.
This was the silence of someone who had said too much.
“You knew Carol before I did?”
“I knew who she was.”
“That isn’t what you said.”
“I’m tired.”
“So am I.”
“Walter.”
“How long did you know Carol?”
Anna sighed.
“Since Millfield.”
I gripped the kitchen counter.
“When?”
“She was around.”
“Where?”
“Church events. Your mother’s house. Places like that.”
Carol and Anna had existed in the same town at the same time. I knew that abstractly. Carol’s family had lived outside Millfield most of her childhood, but they attended Grace Methodist and visited Ruth’s circle often.
Still, I had never considered the possibility that they had actually known each other.
“Did Carol talk to you before you left?”
Anna did not answer.
My knees weakened.
I pulled out a chair and sat.
“Anna.”
“Yes.”
The word came with unmistakable reluctance.
My throat tightened.
“When?”
“The day after your mother.”
I stared at Carol’s empty chair across the room.
“What did she say?”
“Not now.”
“Why?”
“Because if I answer that, I have to answer everything.”
“Then answer everything.”
“I can’t do that over the phone.”
“You just told me not to come.”
“I know.”
“This is insane.”
“Yes.”
I laughed once, without humor.
“At least we agree on something.”
The old familiarity in the exchange frightened me.
I rubbed the bridge of my nose.
“Did Carol know where you were all these years?”
“Not exactly.”
“That’s not an answer.”
“She knew enough.”
“Enough to contact you?”
Another pause.
“Sometimes.”
I stood again.
“Sometimes?”
“Walter, sit down.”
“How do you know I’m standing?”
“You always stood when you were angry.”
I almost dropped the phone.
For forty years I had lived an entire life without Anna Mercer.
Yet she remembered something as small as that.
I sat.
“When did Carol contact you?”
“Not regularly.”
“When?”
“The first time was years after you married.”
“How many years?”
Anna breathed out.
“About three.”
My mind calculated automatically.
Rebecca would have been a toddler.
“What did she want?”
“I’m not answering that today.”
“Today?”
“If we’re going to talk about this, I want to see you.”
“You just told me not to come.”
“I changed my mind.”
I stared at the table.
That sentence carried an ugly echo.
Anna seemed to hear it too.
“I’m sorry.”
“Don’t.”
“I didn’t mean—”
“I know what you meant.”
Silence again.
Then Anna said, “Are you able to drive?”
“I drove yesterday.”
“That isn’t what I asked.”
“I’m not ninety.”
“You were impatient at twenty-two. I doubt age improved you.”
Despite everything, I smiled.
It vanished quickly.
“I can drive.”
“I’m not in Erie itself. There’s a town called Harbor Ridge about twenty miles south.”
“I can find it.”
“I live outside town.”
“Give me the address.”
Anna did.
I wrote it carefully.
A farmhouse road.
Number 418.
She continued, “There’s a diner beside the pharmacy in the town center.”
“Why the diner?”
“I’d rather meet there first.”
“Why?”
“Because you may decide you don’t want to come any farther.”
The pen stopped in my hand.
“What does that mean?”
“It means what I have to tell you may change how you remember several people you loved.”
“Anna.”
“I’m not trying to frighten you.”
“You’re succeeding.”
“I’m trying to be fair.”
“I don’t need fair anymore.”
“Yes, you do.”
Her certainty angered me.
“You don’t get to decide what I can handle.”
“You’re right.”
I was not expecting agreement.
She said, “Come tomorrow if you still want to.”
“I want to come today.”
“No.”
“Why?”
“Because I need time.”
“For what?”
“Forty years can’t be unpacked in six hours.”
I looked at the adoption folder still sitting on the edge of the table.
“Does Rebecca have something to do with why you left?”
Anna stopped speaking.
Every sound in the kitchen disappeared beneath the blood rushing through my ears.
I waited.
“Anna.”
Her voice came back strained.
“Ask me tomorrow.”
“That is an answer.”
“No. It isn’t.”
“It is to me.”
“Walter.”
“What?”
“Do not call Rebecca before we talk.”
I stood so abruptly the chair tipped backward.
“What did you say?”
“Please.”
“Why are you telling me not to call my daughter?”
“I’m telling you not to ask her questions neither of us can answer properly over the phone.”
“Neither of us?”
“I chose the wrong words.”
“You keep doing that.”
“I know.”
I heard something on her end then.
A door opening.
Footsteps.
A man’s voice, too distant to understand.
Anna quickly said, “I have to go.”
“Who is that?”
“No one.”
The old answer.
Nothing.
No one.
Words people used when the truth was standing directly beside them.
“Anna, wait.”
“Tomorrow. Eleven o’clock. Harbor Ridge Diner.”
“Who just came in?”
“Walter.”
The man spoke again.
This time I caught one word.
Mom.
My grip loosened on the phone.
Anna said nothing.
Neither did I.
The word hung between us.
Mom.
Then Anna whispered, “Tomorrow.”
The line went dead.
I stared at the silent phone.
Anna had a child.
There was nothing remarkable about that. She was sixty-one years old. She could have children, grandchildren, an entire family I knew nothing about.
But my mind had already begun making dangerous connections.
Anna’s green eyes.
Rebecca’s green eyes.
My mother’s initial in the adoption file.
Carol’s last request.
Diane’s warning.
And now Anna telling me not to speak to Rebecca until we met.
I picked up the fallen chair.
My knees were trembling.
Tomorrow no longer felt like a meeting with a woman I once loved.
It felt like an appointment with the part of my own life everyone else had known except me.
Click here to continue reading: PART 6: I Drove Six Hours to Meet Anna, and the Man Who Walked Into the Diner Made My Carefully Built Explanations Collapse
On the Last Night Carol Could Speak Clearly, She Asked Me to Find the Woman I Had Spent Forty Years Forgetting
Part 5 of 35
