I would’ve known it from a grocery list on the other side of the world. The little loop on the y’s. The way the capital P leaned backward as though it were trying to look over its own shoulder. A whole page of it, unmistakable now, every letter another confirmation.
Yolanda.
I stopped breathing.
My sister Yolanda, whom I hadn’t spoken to in 15 years. I’d walked out on her in a lawyer’s office over our mother’s will and never called again. I’d heard through a cousin that she’d died of something long and quiet a few years earlier.
I hadn’t gone to bury her because I told myself that door had been closed for too long already.
I sat down hard on the porch step.
“Petra,” the letter began. “If you’re reading this, then Mr. Frankson kept his promise and Noah made it to 18.”
I’d walked out on her.
I made a sound I didn’t recognize.
“I’m so sorry. I’ve written this letter a hundred times, and every version was a coward’s letter. This one is going to be the same too, but I’m running out of time to write a better one.”
I took a deep breath and continued reading.
I made a sound I didn’t recognize.
“I had a son, Noah. He was two when I got sick, and I knew I wasn’t going to get better. I couldn’t call you. Too much had been said, and most of it by me. Noah’s father wouldn’t raise him alone, so we asked one person to help us, Mr. Frankson.”
I pressed the heel of my hand to my mouth.
“He placed him for adoption. I didn’t mean for him to end up with you, Petra. Mr. Frankson kept watch over Noah and told me you’d accidentally adopted him. I don’t know what sorcery lined things up that way. But I was grateful that he’d found his way to you.”
The porch seemed to tilt beneath me.
“He was two when I got sick.”
Fifteen years of my adopted child’s laugh at my breakfast table. Of Mia introducing him as her brother, with no explanation needed. Of thanking God for a stranger’s child.
Only to find out that he’d never been a stranger!
A car door slammed at the end of the driveway. Voices. Kids. The first of Noah’s friends arrived with a wrapped box and a helium balloon shaped like the number 18.
He’d never been a stranger!
I folded the letter against my chest and stood up.
I had a party to smile through.
I walked back inside with the letter tucked against my ribs, and our first guests.
More guests started arriving five minutes later, and I put on the face I had spent my whole life practicing.
***
I sang. I cut the cake. I hugged Noah when he blew out his candles, and he smiled at me the way he had when he was three years old.
I had a party to smile through.
My eyes kept finding him across the room, looking for Yolanda in the shape of his jaw, in the set of his shoulders, and in the way he laughed a beat late, like she used to.
***
By 11 p.m., the last guest was gone.
Mia kissed my cheek and dragged herself upstairs, worn out from hosting.
I waited until I heard her door close. Then I asked Noah to sit with me.
My eyes kept finding him.
I put the envelope down between us.
He looked at it, and I watched every bit of color drain from his face.
“You know what this is,” I said.
“Mom…”
“Don’t lie. Just tell me.”
My son pressed his hands flat against the table as though he were trying to steady himself.
