“Did he know about me?”
“Yes.”
The room became unbearably quiet.
“He knew?”
Thomas nodded.
“Margaret wrote to him. She told him about the pregnancy. He replied once, saying he wasn’t ready to become a father. After that, he disappeared.”
I felt something harden inside me.
All my life, I had wondered why I had no baby photographs, why my parents avoided questions about my birth, and why Dad sometimes looked at me with an expression that seemed to contain both love and guilt.
Now I understood that there had been more than one person who had chosen silence.
But I was not finished asking questions.
“Where is he now?”
Thomas hesitated.
“We don’t know for certain.”
I looked at the document again.
There was an address printed on the old envelope.
A town two hours away.
And beneath it was a name I recognized.
Daniel Collins.
I spent the next two weeks searching for him.
