Chapter 6 - The Letters Under the Stairs
I took down the post and wrote a correction without asking the public to choose which one of us had suffered more.
I said Dominic had been a child when we were separated, that adults had supplied false information, and that I regretted implying he knew I was alive.
I did not excuse the cruel article about me.
I did not mention details Evelyn had shared privately.
I called Dominic afterward.
"I was wrong," I said.
He was quiet for so long I wondered whether the call had disconnected.
"Thank you," he said finally.
"I'm still upset with you about the storefront offer."
"I know."
"And I'm not ready to pretend we can just be a family by Sunday."
"Neither am I."
We agreed to meet again without reporters, lawyers, or assistants unless a specific question required one.
Meanwhile, Michelle Tran continued helping us seek corrections to our records.
The agency's surviving files did not prove that Evelyn personally forged my signature.
They did show that a form supposedly signed by me had been submitted along with a letter from Evelyn asking that Daniel's sibling-contact requests be terminated.
No death certificate accompanied the report that I had died.
The agency had apparently accepted the claim without independently verifying it.
Michelle explained that responsibility for a decades-old record would need careful review, including who submitted it and what procedures existed at the time.
We could request an administrative correction and speak with specialists about possible legal options.
That was enough of a next step.
I didn't need a courtroom scene delivered in a week.
I needed the official story to stop saying that I had abandoned a child I'd spent years trying to reach.
One afternoon, Evelyn's niece called Michelle.
She said Evelyn had asked her to deliver a box of letters that had been kept in a closet beneath the stairs.
Dominic asked me to be there when it arrived.
The box was small, with faded flowers painted on its lid.
Inside were envelopes addressed to Daniel Moreno, care of the Vale household.
My handwriting covered every one.
Some were written in blue pen on lined paper.
Others came from the stationery counter where I worked after leaving Aunt Ruth's house.
There were birthday cards, a Christmas drawing, photographs of our mother's old kitchen, and letters written when I didn't know whether Danny would ever read them.
The postmarks covered nearly seven years.
I had sent more letters than I'd remembered.
Dominic lifted a birthday card carefully.
I had written:
Dear Danny, I know you might be angry that I couldn't keep us together. I am still your sister. I will be waiting for you when you're ready.
His face crumpled.
He had believed those years were evidence I wanted nothing to do with him.
The unopened envelopes proved a different story, one I'd been unable to show him because the person controlling his mail had hidden it.
"Why didn't Leon tell me?" he whispered.
Leon Vale had died five years earlier.
Evelyn's niece said she did not know whether he had been aware of the box.
Dominic nodded, unwilling to turn an unanswered question into a verdict against a dead man.
"I wish I'd had one of these," he said.
"So do I."
We spent the afternoon reading without trying to fill every silence.
Sometimes he laughed at a memory.
Sometimes he put a page down and stared out the window.
At the bottom of the box was a photograph I'd never seen.
It showed our mother standing beside Evelyn outside the yellow house.
The date on the back was three weeks before Mother’s funeral.
Evelyn hadn't been a stranger who met Daniel only after his placement.
She had visited our home before he was taken away.
In the photograph, the two women were shaking hands.
May you like
And written beside Evelyn's name were three words in our mother's handwriting:
ASK HER FIRST.
