I watched Rebecca put her hand inside her purse.
I had been waiting for her to do that.
I didn't know what I expected her to produce.
A photograph, perhaps.
Some record with a name on it.
Something that could tell me whether I was speaking to my daughter or to a woman who had made a terrible mistake.
Instead, she brought out a folded sheet of paper.
It looked old.
The edges had darkened with age, and the folds had been pressed so many times that I could see where the paper had weakened.
She held it carefully.
That told me something.
Not about what was written on it.
Only that it mattered to her.
She hadn't picked it up that morning and forgotten about it until she reached the church.
She had carried it before.
I could see that in the way she handled it.
“What is that?” I asked.
“A letter.”
I looked at her face.
“Who wrote it?”
“My adoptive mother.”
I didn't reach for it.
Rebecca waited.
The paper was between us.
It seemed ridiculous that one ordinary piece of paper could frighten me so badly.
I had spent fifty-five years wanting something of my daughter.
A photograph.
A keepsake.
Anything that proved she had been real for those few hours.
Now someone was offering me a letter connected to the child I had mourned.
And I couldn't make myself take it.
I looked past Rebecca toward the front of the church.
Mama's casket was still there.
I had stood beside it earlier and thought about how final death was.
Now I was beginning to understand that her death had made something else final.
I would never be able to ask her what she had done.
Or what she had known.
Or why she had told me my baby was dead.
I hadn't yet accepted that she had lied.
I want to be clear about that.
At that moment, I was still trying to find another explanation.
Maybe Rebecca's adoptive mother had misunderstood something.
Maybe there were two women with the same name.
Maybe someone had confused the records.
I would have accepted almost any mistake before I accepted that Mama had looked at me and deliberately taken my living child away from me.
Rebecca spoke gently.
“I know this is a lot.”
I nodded.
That was the best I could do.
She looked down at the letter.
“I've kept it with me.”
“For how long?”
She took a breath.
“Since I started trying to understand everything.”
I stared at the paper.
There were no answers visible on the outside.
Only old folds and yellowed edges.
I thought about how many times I had held my mother's hands.
How many times I had listened to her tell me what was best.
How many times I had accepted her explanations because I believed she would never hurt me on purpose.
I hadn't been a perfect daughter.
I knew that.
But I had trusted her about the one thing that mattered most.
The death of my child.
I looked back at Rebecca.
“Did your mother write that before she died?”
Rebecca held the paper a little closer to herself.
“She wanted me to know what had happened.”
I tried to understand that.
Her adoptive mother had known there was something Rebecca needed to hear.
Something she had kept private.
And before she died, she had decided Rebecca should have the truth.
My own mother was lying in a casket.
Whatever she knew was going into the ground with her.
I felt angry.
Then ashamed of the anger.
She was dead.
I had loved her.
I was still at her funeral.
I had no idea whether the woman standing beside me had proof.
But already I was looking at Mama differently.
I hated that.
I hated that I could stand in church grieving my mother and suddenly wonder whether I had ever known her properly.
“Why didn't your adoptive mother tell you earlier?” I asked.
Rebecca looked at me.
“I wish I'd known sooner.”
It was a simple answer.
And I understood it.
I wished I had known sooner too.
Even before I believed her.
Even before I saw the letter.
I could feel the years pressing against me.
Fifty-five years was not a short time.
It was enough time for a child to grow up.
Enough time for a woman to become old.
Enough time for two people to live separate lives that could never be lived again.
That thought frightened me.
I hadn't lost a few days.
If Rebecca was telling the truth, I had lost everything between the night she was born and the afternoon she stood beside me.
I looked at her hands.
She had long fingers.
They were shaking slightly.
I wondered whether she had imagined this moment.
Whether she had practiced what she would say when she found me.
I wondered whether she had expected an embrace.
I hadn't given her one.
I had pulled away.
Looking back, I can understand why I did it.
But I can also imagine how it must have felt to her.
She had come looking for her mother.
And the first thing I did was tell her she couldn't be my child.
I swallowed.
“Rebecca.”
She looked up quickly.
I hadn't said her name before.
Not like that.
Her expression changed for a moment.
I saw hope.
It nearly undid me.
“I need you to understand something,” I said.
“All right.”
“I was told my baby was buried.”
She nodded.
“That's what I understand.”
“I didn't spend all those years thinking she might be somewhere.”
“I know.”
“I thought she was gone.”
Rebecca started crying again.
Quietly this time.
I wanted to comfort her.
But I still didn't know whether I had the right.
She might be my daughter.
Those words had begun to form in my mind.
I didn't say them aloud.
I was afraid that if I did, I would believe them before I was ready.
Rebecca moved the letter toward me again.
I looked at it.
There was something unbearable about the care she took not to push it into my hands.
She was giving me a choice.
I could read it.
Or I could refuse.
I had lived fifty-five years with one explanation.
I could have tried to hold on to it.
I could have told Rebecca to leave.
But I couldn't forget the way she had addressed me.
Or the way she knew what Mama had said.
And I couldn't stop seeing that small dimple in her chin.
The same place as mine.
It wasn't proof.
I knew that.
Still, it made me look again.
“There's something about your face,” I said.
Rebecca waited.
I touched my own chin without thinking.
She watched my hand.
Her eyes filled.
I felt foolish.
A dimple was nothing.
Families couldn't be proven by a chin.
But resemblance was something I could see while the letter remained closed.
It was the first thing that had reached me without words.
Rebecca didn't tell me what to think.
She just stood there.
I looked down at the paper again.
“May I see it?”
Rebecca held it out.
This time, I reached for it.
Click here to continue reading: PART 4: I Finally Took the Letter From Rebecca’s Hands, But the Hardest Part Was Admitting What I Did Not Know
I Was Standing Beside My Mother’s Casket When a Stranger Asked for the Name I Had Used All My Life
Part 3 of 10
