Chapter 3 - The Letter I Never Wrote
I took a day off work and drove to my adoptive mother's house in Mason, north of Cincinnati. Irene Sloan was sixty-three and still lived in the small brick home where I had learned that quiet could be safe. There were photographs of my nursing-school graduation on the mantel and a quilt she had sewn for my first apartment.
"You look tired," she said when she opened the door.
"I found Damian."
Her hand stopped against the door frame. "The boy from Oakridge?"
"He's thirty-four now. He came to my clinic. He says he was taken from the bus station and told I didn't want him to contact me."
Irene sat down slowly. I showed her the photocopy of the note.
"Did you ever see this?"
She read it and shook her head. "No. But I did get a call about him when you first came here."
"You told me the caseworker said he'd left with relatives."
"That's what I was told. They said he'd been encouraging you to run away and that you needed stability. I didn't know whether he was dangerous. You were fifteen, Eva. You barely slept for weeks."
"Did someone tell you not to let him contact me?"
Irene folded her hands. "I was advised to maintain a period of no contact until the social worker reviewed the situation. I followed the advice. I thought I was doing what the professionals wanted."
"And after that period ended?"
"I assumed they would tell us. Nobody did."
For years I'd loved Irene because she never forced me to explain my fear. She allowed me to lock my bedroom door without making me feel ungrateful. She drove me to appointments and sat in the car when I needed space. Her kindness was real. So was the possibility that a decision made without my knowledge had separated me from someone important.
"I wish you'd asked me," I said.
"I didn't know how much you knew. They told me he was part of why you'd run."
"He helped me leave a place where I was afraid."
Irene looked down. "I understand that better now."
We went through a box of placement documents she kept in the hall closet. There were school records, therapy appointments, and adoption paperwork. An early case summary stated that I had severed contact with another Oakridge resident "at the youth's request." It contained no letter from me and no note that anyone had asked me directly.
"I never made that request," I said.
Irene's eyes filled. "I believed the caseworker. I should have asked."
The wording in the summary mattered. Someone had changed a recommendation made by adults into an action supposedly chosen by a child. It was the kind of small administrative sentence that could travel through years of decisions without anyone returning to the person at its center.
I called Damian from the back porch. I told him what I had found and asked whether he had copies of any placement records. He said he kept the letter and a discharge form from his first placement. His file included a notation that contact with me had been declined after "consultation with the receiving household."
"What receiving household?" I asked.
"I was placed with an aunt I hadn't seen since I was six. They didn't call her until a week later. I don't know who supposedly consulted her."
We decided to seek our own records through the proper channels. Child welfare files include sensitive information about other people, and neither of us expected to be handed unrestricted copies simply because the past hurt. We would request what we were entitled to, ask for corrections where allowed, and get independent legal advice before accusing anyone of falsifying documents.
Before I drove home, Irene brought me a packet of photographs from the summer after I arrived. There was a picture of me standing in front of the garden she'd planted for my first birthday in her home. I looked wary, with my arms folded against my chest.
"I was so afraid you'd leave," she said. "I thought if I kept everything calm, you'd stay."
"You didn't need to erase my past to make me stay."
She nodded. "I know that now."
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At home I laid the two case summaries side by side. Both claimed I had declined contact. Both used nearly identical wording. But one was dated before I'd even reached Irene's house.
Someone had written down my answer before anyone had asked me the question.
