Chapter 4
Evelyn drew back as though Sarah had struck her.
“Why would you meet Adrian?”
Sarah glanced at me. I was still sitting beside her on the hospital bed, holding her hand.
“I need Rosie with me,” she said.
“You have me,” I told her.
A doctor came in to check her before she could say more. He asked everyone but me to step outside for a moment. Sarah said I could stay.
He shone a small light in her eyes and asked what she remembered.
“I went to the Waldorf,” she said. “Adrian met me in the service corridor. We argued.”
“What happened afterward?”
She closed her eyes.
“I remember going to the garage. Then someone grabbed my envelope.”
“Did you see who?”
“I’m trying.”
The doctor told her not to force the memory. After he left, Evelyn and Helen returned. Mrs. Vega remained by the door.
Sarah looked directly at Evelyn.
“Adrian wrote to me last week,” she said. “He said you were ill and wanted to make peace before it was too late.”
“I’m not ill.”
“I know that now.”
“He told you that?”
“He sent a letter. He asked me to bring papers Dad left me.”
Evelyn’s face tightened.
“What papers?”
Sarah looked at me again.
I knew she was weighing how much to say in front of me. She had done that my whole life. We lived in one small apartment, yet there were corners of her past I could not reach.
“Rosie deserves the truth,” I said.
Sarah swallowed.
“My father left me shares in a company the Whitmore family owns. I didn’t want them. I thought they came with the kind of life I’d left behind.”
“Why bring the papers now?” Helen asked.
“Rosie needs help,” Sarah said. “Her asthma got worse this year. My hours were cut, and I fell behind on rent. Adrian said he could arrange a payment if I signed some things.”
I had known about the rent. I had heard our landlord at the door. I had not known Sarah was going to a hotel to ask her brother for money.
“You could have come to me,” Evelyn whispered.
“I tried, years ago. Every letter I sent was returned.”
“I never received them.”
Sarah looked at her steadily.
“I believed you didn’t want us.”
Evelyn sat down without speaking.
Helen asked about the brown envelope.
“It held Dad’s old letter and my share certificate,” Sarah said. “I copied both before I went. The originals are in our apartment.”
Mrs. Vega and I looked at each other. I had seen Sarah tuck something into the lining of her winter coat the day before.
“Did Adrian get the envelope you carried?” I asked.
“I don’t know.”
Helen wrote down everything Sarah remembered. Then she called the detective assigned to the case.
Evelyn remained in her chair. When Helen stepped out, she turned to Sarah.
“I looked for you.”
“Where?”
“I hired people after you left. They told me you didn’t want contact. Later I heard you had married. I thought you were happy.”
“I was never married.”
I watched Evelyn’s hands fold around each other.
“Adrian handled the searches,” she said quietly.
Sarah turned her head toward the window.
That afternoon, Helen went with Mrs. Vega to our apartment to find the original papers. I stayed at the hospital.
Evelyn brought me a sandwich from downstairs. She did not try to touch me when she handed it over.
“I was wrong last night,” she said.
“You already told me.”
“I’ll keep saying it if you need me to.”
“I need Mom to be okay.”
“So do I.”
I ate while Sarah slept. Evelyn sat on the other side of the room, giving us space.
By evening, Helen returned with Sarah’s winter coat and a sealed envelope. She had also found a box of letters beneath our bed.
Sarah recognized it immediately.
“Those are the ones I wrote,” she said.
Evelyn opened the first letter with Sarah’s permission. It was dated fourteen years earlier. Sarah had written that she missed her father and wanted to know if her mother would speak with her.
Across the front was a note in red ink.
Return to sender.
Helen turned the envelope over.
“There’s no postal mark,” she said.
Sarah raised her head.
“What does that mean?”
“It may never have been mailed.”
Evelyn opened a second. It bore the same red words and no postal mark.
A third was addressed to Sarah from Evelyn.
Sarah stared at it.
“I’ve never seen that.”
The box had been in our apartment for years. Sarah told me it came from a storage locker after a man from the Whitmore office contacted her. She had assumed the letters were copies of attempts that failed.
Helen examined the handwriting on the red notes.
“Who gave you the box?” she asked.
Sarah thought hard.
“Adrian’s assistant delivered it.”
May you like
I looked at Evelyn. She was holding the letter she had written to her daughter, her thumb pressed against an unopened edge.
Someone had kept them apart and then sent Sarah the proof, arranged to make each woman think the other had refused her.
