Chapter 2 - What My Father Never Opened
I locked myself in the employee bathroom until the shift ended.
That sounds childish, but there are moments when a person needs a door between herself and a roomful of witnesses.
My hands were shaking so badly I could barely flatten my mother's letter against the counter.
The note was short.
She said she loved me, that she had tried to call, and that grown-ups had made decisions I would not understand yet.
She promised she would keep trying.
There was no return address.
At the bottom, beneath the plea to distrust the story about her, she had drawn a crooked little star.
When I was a child, she used to draw stars on the paper bags that held my school lunches.
My father had told me the star was a symbol she copied from a magazine.
I had believed him because children need somebody's explanation to be true.
Nathan knocked on the door.
"Your shift is over. You can pick up your final check on Friday."
"Adrian said you couldn't fire me."
"He said to stop shouting. He didn't say you're employed."
Nathan walked away before I could answer.
On the way out, my friend Pilar caught my sleeve.
She'd been a hostess for three years and knew which managers skimmed the service charge before it reached the servers.
"Take a picture of your schedule," she whispered. "They change hours in the system when they want someone gone."
I photographed the posted rota and the register printout showing my clock-in time.
I wanted the pay I had earned, whatever happened with Adrian.
Outside, a car idled at the curb.
Adrian stood beside it holding the envelope I had dropped.
"I should have told you in private," he said.
"You shouldn't have kept it from me for twenty years."
He accepted that.
It was the most unsettling thing about him.
When I attacked, he did not immediately deny the blow.
"You wrote to my office," he said. "I asked my assistant to review the old files."
"Six months ago."
"Yes."
"And you waited until I dropped a glass?"
"I didn't recognize you when you were hired. I came here tonight because your latest letter reached me personally."
I wasn't sure I believed him.
I told him I wanted originals, not copies, and the name of whoever had kept the letters.
"You can speak with our records custodian through your attorney."
"I don't have an attorney. I have a bus pass and seventy-four dollars."
He reached toward his wallet.
I stepped back.
"Don't. You've already bought silence from this family once."
He put his hand down.
That night I went to my father's storage unit in Queens.
Daniel Grant had died of a stroke four years earlier.
He had been a proud man who resented anyone asking how money moved through his house.
His belongings were mostly old tools, winter coats, and boxes he labeled with dates I had never checked.
In one cardboard carton I found a school backpack from third grade.
Inside were six birthday cards in my mother's handwriting.
None had ever reached me.
Each envelope had been slit open with a knife.
I sat on a concrete floor, reading apologies for missed birthdays while the storage facility's fluorescent lights hummed overhead.
By the fourth card, the anger I felt toward Adrian began to split.
My father had hidden these himself.
He had watched me ask questions about my mother and told me the same story every year.
She left because she didn't want the responsibility.
I found a seventh envelope at the bottom of the backpack, addressed to my father rather than to me.
On it he'd written in red marker: NEVER GIVE HER THIS.
Inside was a document filed in family court.
The petition requested an order limiting Lucia's contact with me, citing allegations of financial misconduct at the company where she'd worked.
My father had signed the affidavit.
The case had been dismissed before a final hearing.
He never told me about it.
I photographed the entire folder and called Pilar.
"Do you know a lawyer who deals with records like this?"
"I know someone who helps servers get unpaid wages," she said. "She might know where to send you."
As I stepped outside the storage building, my phone rang.
The display showed an unfamiliar area code.
"Is this Bella Grant?" a woman asked.
"Yes."
"My name is Lucia. Someone told me you've been looking for me."
May you like
She paused, and I heard the faint scrape of a chair.
"Before you say anything, sweetheart, did Daniel ever give you my blue box?"
