He did not answer.
I stood up slowly. My knees ached from the hospital chairs, from the long weeks of leaning over an incubator.
“I need to see for myself. Not through you. Not through what William did to Mom. I need to know what Caleb actually did to me.”
Grandpa closed his eyes. I took Nora back into my arms and walked to my car, already knowing where I would look first.
***
That night, after Nora was asleep, I pulled my mother’s cedar box from the closet.
He hadn’t forgotten me.
If Grandpa had hidden that family from me, I needed to know what else was inside.
I was looking for proof that Grandpa was wrong about Caleb. What I found was proof that Caleb had been lying to me, too.
Beneath the scarves was a photograph of me at four, sitting on a red bicycle. Beside me stood a dark-haired boy with mismatched eyes.
Under it lay a bundle of letters. The earliest was written in a child’s careful print.
‘He isn’t like his father.’
‘Dear Sarah, where did the little girl go? Did she take her bicycle? Please write back. Caleb.’
He hadn’t forgotten me. Not even then.
I opened another, then another. A teenage hand, folded bills tucked inside.
‘I saved this from my allowance. Please use it for her. Please tell me she is okay.’
A later letter was written in an older, less careful hand.
‘Grandfather says he’s leaving something for me when I’m old enough. Dad says I’ll never touch any of it without him. Maybe someday I’ll finally be able to help you myself.’
He had known.
On the back of the last letter, in my mother’s slanted script, were five words:
‘He isn’t like his father.’
My mother had trusted Caleb before I was old enough to remember him.
Now I needed to know whether I’d been a fool to do the same.
My mouth went dry.
I remembered a night on Caleb’s couch, months before I knew I was pregnant, when he had asked me, almost too casually, if I ever had a red bicycle as a child.
“You look exactly like your mother.”
I had laughed and said yes; my mom bought it secondhand. He had smiled at the ceiling like a man who had just answered a question he had been carrying for twenty years.
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