Chapter 7: Rose
He called her that afternoon.
He didn't tell me he was going to.
I found out because I was walking past the study and the door was half-open, and I heard him say: "My name is Adrian Moretti.
I think you may have been looking for my family for a very long time."
I stopped walking.
A long silence from inside the room.
Then, quieter: "I know.
I'm sorry it took this long.
I didn't know you existed until two days ago."
I kept walking.
Some things are not for other people to hear.
Even the edges of them.
He was in the study for two hours.
When he came out, he looked like someone who had run a very long distance and had not yet decided how to feel about having arrived.
"She's thirty-three," he said.
He hadn't asked me to stay, but he didn't ask me to go either.
"She's a school librarian.
She has a daughter.
Seven years old."
"Does she know about your mother?"
"She knows she was placed at birth.
She knows there were — circumstances." He sat down at the kitchen table — not the formal dining room, the kitchen table where the staff ate.
I had never seen him sit there before.
"She said she stopped hoping anyone would call.
She said she registered because someone told her to, and then she tried to forget she'd done it, because hoping felt too expensive."
I sat down across from him.
"What did she say when you told her who you were?"
He was quiet for a moment.
"She didn't say anything for a while.
Then she said: *Is this real?* And I said yes.
And she said—" He stopped.
Pressed his hand flat on the table.
"She said: *My daughter's middle name is Elena.* "
I didn't say anything.
I wasn't sure I could.
"She named her daughter after a woman she never met," he said.
"She found my mother's name in the adoption records — just the first name, that's all she was given — and she put it in her daughter's name so it wouldn't disappear." He looked at the table.
"She didn't know if she'd ever find anyone.
She just didn't want the name to be gone."
The kitchen was very quiet.
"She's coming to Chicago next week," he said.
"Miss Evie will want to see her."
He looked up.
"That's actually—" He paused.
"Yes.
I was thinking the same thing.
Evie is the one who kept all of this.
She's the one who made sure it survived." Something in his jaw shifted.
"She deserves to be in the room."
I nodded.
He sat for another moment.
Then he stood up and looked around the kitchen like he was remembering where he was.
"Sophie."
"Sir."
"You've been here since before seven this morning.
Go home."
"I live on the third floor."
"Then go upstairs." The corner of his mouth moved almost imperceptibly.
"Get some rest.
You've been holding this house together for two days."
I stood up.
"Will you tell Evie tonight?" I asked.
"Tomorrow," he said.
"When she's stronger."
I was almost to the door when he said: "Sophie."
I turned.
"The reason Evie is alive," he said carefully, "is because you didn't leave her on the floor."
He didn't wait for an answer.
He walked back toward the study.
I went upstairs.
I sat on my bed and looked at the window for a while.
Then I took out my phone and called my mother.
She was on her break between shifts.
She answered on the second ring.
"Mom."
"Sophie?
What's wrong?"
"Nothing," I said.
"Nothing's wrong.
I just wanted to hear your voice."
A pause.
"You sound tired, baby."
"I am," I said.
"But it's a good kind of tired."
She made the sound she always made when she wasn't quite convinced but was willing to let it go.
And then she started telling me about a customer who had come through her checkout line with forty-seven coupons, and I lay back on my pillow and listened, and outside the window the Chicago night was quiet and cold and full of things that were, against all odds, beginning to come right.
But Gerald Ashford had not yet sent the documents.
And Catherine Marsh had left a message while I was on the phone with my mother that I didn't see until I was almost asleep.
*He's pushing back.
He's claiming the records don't exist.
Call me in the morning.*
May you like
I set my phone face-down on the nightstand.
I didn't sleep as well as I'd hoped.
