Continued, The Correspondent
Sybil Van Antwerp Stone
Arnold
United States of America
Greetings, Sybil,
I received your letter from January at the end of April.
The letter went to an old address, then it seems it went round and round never finding its way and finally it did come to me all bent and rumpled as if it’d been shoved someplace.
I kept the letter to myself for several days and read it repeatedly, so many times the paper began to soften, stunned so I was.
When I started with Kindred it was to trace familial lines of my father, an American, about whom I have very little knowledge, and when they began the DNA testing it was offered to me free of charge, so I did it rather without much thought, I’m somewhat embarrassed to say, seems a bit foolish, doesn’t it?
And anyway, shortly after it I was going through some bills and trying to tidy up and cut back (I’d really already got as much information as I could about my paternal lineage), so I printed out the family history I’d found and closed the account.
Hadn’t given Kindred a thought again until I read your letter.
I am a botanist, familiar with DNA. Initially, I thought the letter had to be some kind of hoax.
A 49% match is absurdly high, and with you materialising from thin air it was something I couldn’t believe.
And yet there was your pristine penmanship on the cream paper, the names of your children.
There is no other way to say it: I believed you.
I took your letter down to my brother, who runs the pub and a hardware store and we mulled it over for a while.
(This was after weeks.) Then I was down in Glasgow teaching a summer course at university, and turning this over and over again in my mind all the time, and now I’m back and made it my first task on returning to my house to write.
I was born in October of 1943, and my brother Declan the year after me.
John and Douglas are twins, and were born in 1948.
Would you please, if it isn’t a bother, send along a copy of the report of our DNA match?
Please don’t take it as rudeness, it’s only I feel the need to see it with my own eyes.
If you will, please send to my correct address, and that is
Hattie Gleason
Bodney Cottage
Fassfern
Fort William PH33 7NP
Scotland
My apologies for the long wait. I won’t take so long the next time, and hope you won’t punish me by waiting your own six months to reply. I’m on the edge of my seat, as they say. You yourself, Sybil, open a door to a world of possibility.
Very best wishes,
Hattie