And I had never once asked whether anything had arrived.
“What did the envelope you opened tonight contain?” I asked.
Victoria didn’t answer.
“Mother.”
“It was a letter from Evelyn.”
“I know that.”
“She wrote that she was leaving Chicago and would not contact you again unless you reached out first.”
“That’s all?”
“No.”
Her voice faltered.
“What else?”
“She wrote that if you ever learned about the children, you should understand that she had not hidden them to punish you. She had hidden them because she believed your family would turn them into possessions.”
Evelyn lowered her head.
I looked at the two small cups on the counter. Pink and blue. Ordinary objects, carrying the weight of a life I had never seen.
“She was right,” I said.
My mother responded quietly, “I never wanted to own them.”
“But you wanted to control where they lived, who knew about them, and whether I had the chance to meet them.”
