Chapter 16 - Claire’s first answer
Three weeks later, a letter arrived.
Handwritten.
Michael opened it alone.
Then asked me to read.
Michael,
I received your second letter.
I am sorry I returned the first.
I needed time to understand that you were actually writing to me.
There.
I have known where you were for most of your life.
That sentence crushed him.
I did not contact you after you became an adult because by then I believed approaching would injure a life you had already built.
Then:
Jessica told me repeatedly that you believed I abandoned you and that appearing would only reopen a wound.
There.
I do not know what she told you.
I do not want our first conversation to be an argument about her.
Good.
Then:
I am your biological mother.
There.
The adoption was legally completed.
I signed the papers.
I was sixteen.
I was frightened.
I regretted signing almost immediately.
All of those facts are true.
There.
Finally:
If you still want contact after reading that, I am willing to speak by telephone.
Michael cried.
Not loudly.
The way men raised by Jessica Hayes learned to cry.
Quiet enough not to inconvenience the room.
I put my hand on his back.
May you like
He did not move away.
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