Over the next week, I read everything.
There were letters from Kate.
Notes from Margaret.
Photographs.
Records.
A birthday card Kate had bought for a child she didn’t know how to reach.
A Christmas ornament she had kept for years.
A tiny yellow sweater she had knitted.
I held it against myself.
It was absurdly small.
Smaller than my hand.
“She kept this?”
Walter nodded.
“She couldn’t give it to you.”
I closed my eyes.
For the first time, I understood that grief could exist for someone you had never met.
I grieved the mother I never knew.
I grieved the childhood she thought I was having.
I grieved the little girl who believed she had been abandoned.
And I grieved the woman I might have become if someone had found me sooner.
But I also had to grieve something else.
The years I had spent beside Walter without knowing who he was.
Because he had found me.
And he had chosen silence.
That part was his.
I wasn’t going to pretend otherwise.
A few days later, Walter sat on his porch.
I walked over.
He looked nervous when he saw me.
“Can I sit?”
He moved over.
I sat beside him.
