The Correspondent: A Novel by Virginia Evans - 49

Hattie Gleason

Bodney Cottage

Fassfern

Fort William PH33 7NP

Scotland

February 2, 2018

Dear Hattie,

Thank you for your letter, and for the photos you sent. Though I have spent what must amount by now to hours staring at the one of your pregnant mother and father, and though I agree it seems we are very likely family, I cannot seem to find a way for the information to take up residence in my body. The strangest thing is to see the resemblance I share with you, and with the man in the photo with the pregnant woman, my father. What is more, that full, beautiful strawberry-blond hair she had is precisely identical to my daughter’s hair, and I had wondered where those genes came from. Remarkable. My brother (by adoption) was here over the holidays and I told him about all of this. I showed him the photos and with one look he was absolutely certain your family is mine. I am enclosing a photograph of myself. The similarity of our faces is remarkable.

I am finding I have nowhere to put all of this. I’m sorry, but do you know what I mean? It’s like I’ve come home from the grocery store overburdened with bags, but the cupboards, the refrigerator, the pantry, the countertop are all already full. A mother and father? But I had a mother and father. Siblings? I have a sibling. It feels a betrayal to even acknowledge you exist! No vacancy. No room at the inn. We’re all full up, and yet the thing I always thought was so small now seems as enormous as a galaxy, this thing I have felt my whole life, and that is, a sense of something missing, this curiosity of why my mother let me go. I haven’t the tools for it though. How to open myself up, let the flood wash over and through.

My life was simple enough. My parents who adopted me were wonderful. My mother had a cancer of the cervix when she was only twenty-four, so she had everything removed, and that meant she was unable to have children. They adopted me, and then my brother from Sisters in Ireland, County Clare, and raised us beautifully, put us through private school and college. The cancer ended up coming back to kill her via the bloodstream when I was eighteen. My dad was a banker and he did very well. My parents were typical American middle-class conservatives, and my father remarried quickly. Nobody wants a stepmother, but mine was fine and I was already out of the house. I will say, when it turned out Felix was gay (he came right out with it before it was an acceptable thing to do, age seventeen), they didn’t miss a beat, my father and his second wife, so in that she earned my respect. You don’t hear that story often, do you? I guess, compared to your life, and your mother’s, I should be grateful for the ease of my own. I married and we had three children. One died young, so I’m down to two, and I’ve made a mess of it. My daughter barely speaks to me. Apparently she’s had miscarriages and didn’t tell me. I have grandchildren now, too. My husband and I divorced, and he has passed away from cancer. Cancer cancer cancer.

I had a career in law. I was a clerk to a judge. Judge Guy Donnelly. I was rather like a cross between his wife and his conscience and his silent counselor. I guess this is the most interesting thing about me, though I hope you don’t think I go around parading this thing like some kind of badge of honor (I do not). It was a very large part of my life, for better or for worse. My career was wonderful for me, but hard on my family, and this is a roundabout way of explaining why my husband and I split up. Well, it’s part of the reasoning.

In any case, my life has recently taken a surprising turn. Last week I hosted a man at my house. He wants to marry me. Oh, it isn’t that he’s produced a ring and got down on his knee, but from the second dinner he’s said we should marry. Can you believe such a thing? Anyway, I don’t have any interest in being married at this point, and it’s a bit of a complexity because I have this other friend, a man who’s a neighbor, and that complicates things—I’m going on and on, and you don’t even know me.

Perhaps you might be willing to tell me a little bit more about yourself. I think I might also like to know just a little bit more about your mother. Additionally, a friend of mine who is an expert in internet researching found three documents pertaining to Charlie Thorne, and I’ve enclosed copies of them here, for your interest. It appears we share two additional half-brothers by the names of Davie and Joe.

Warm regards,

Sybil