Chapter 4 - Where We Said Goodbye
The place was a pedestrian bridge over Little Sugar Creek.
Seven years earlier, Alice and I had fought there about my father's offer to buy her silence with a job out of state.
I had called the offer ridiculous.
She had looked past me into the traffic and said I did not understand what my parents were capable of.
I had let pride choose my answer.
Now I stood beneath the same streetlamps with my phone recording the time and Owen waiting half a block away.
Alice came from the far side of the bridge wearing a plain gray coat.
She looked older, thinner, and completely alive.
We stopped a few feet apart.
For years I had rehearsed imaginary conversations with someone I believed I could never see again.
None of them helped me now.
'I was told you died,' I said.
'I was told you signed away your right to know your child,' she answered.
Neither of us moved.
Alice explained that my parents had intercepted her messages after she announced the pregnancy.
A private adviser hired by my father had offered housing and legal help.
When Alice refused to disappear, someone had claimed I wanted nothing to do with her.
She had left the state in fear, suffered a complicated period after delivery, and entered a long-term recovery program.
'I signed temporary placement papers,' she said. 'Not a surrender.'
I told her what Helen had said about the adoption.
Alice closed her eyes.
'He used my signature on forms I never saw.'
She did not offer me a tidy explanation for every missing year.
There had been illness, isolation, failures by people she trusted, and periods when she lacked the resources to fight the system.
I was angry at everyone involved, including myself, but I could hear how much effort it cost her to speak.
I asked whether she wanted to meet Maisie.
'Every day,' she said. 'But I don't want to be the reason she loses the only home she's known.'
I promised not to force my daughter through a sudden revelation.
We would move at the speed a child could manage, with professional guidance.
Alice pressed a folded receipt into my hand.
It was from my father's company, dated the week she delivered.
The memo said 'Baird placement administration.'
Below the amount was a handwritten authorization code.
I recognized the code from my grandfather's trust accounting.
Before I could ask another question, Alice looked over my shoulder.
A dark SUV had stopped across the road.
She stepped backward.
'Your father knows,' she said.
May you like
And the passenger window began to lower.
