Chapter 5
Chapter Five
Rowan pulled out an envelope and handed it to her.
She expected another report. More photos.
But that wasn’t what she found.
“What is this?” she asked.
A photocopy of a money order. Five hundred dollars, made out to her mother. Across the bottom: Returned unopened.
She turned to the next report. Another money order, also returned unopened. The next one was the same. She placed them on the carpet as she went. Her father had sent money across the ocean again and again, but every single one had come back.
“He sent money,” she said. Her voice sounded strange in her ears. Thin.
“Looks like.”
“She sent it back.” She held up one of the copies. “Five hundred dollars would have been rent, Rowan. That was groceries. Clothes. She sent it all back.”
He didn’t offer a defense. She was grateful for that.
“The church ladies who paid for the motel,” Leah said, thinking back.
“Two women from some Catholic charity. They came to the motel and gave Mom money. I thought it was a miracle. I literally thought God had sent cash.” She stared at the typed words until they blurred.
“It was him. It was him the whole time. He must have figured out she wasn’t going to accept his money. ”
“He could be persistent.”
“She let me think—” She pressed the heels of her hands against her eyes. “Why?”
Rowan shrugged. “Maybe it was pride. Or fear. I don’t know. Whatever Madeline and Gerald said, and maybe even your grandmother, was enough.”
“My mom wasn’t prideful,” Leah said. “You’re looking at the evidence. Look at those places we lived. She didn’t care what she looked like. She certainly never cared that my hair was tangled and my clothes were too small and stained. That’s not pride.”
“I’m sorry,” Rowan said. “I have no explanation.”
“Bitterness,” Leah surmised. “I think she was punishing my father and herself and ultimately, me.”
She kept going. It was all she could do. Each envelope was another year, another life she’d lived without knowing anyone was watching.
Then she came across one from the last year.
“He knew about the flowers,” she whispered.
Rowan took the page gently from her hand and read it. “He knew you worked with them.”
Near the bottom of the box, clipped to a report, was her mother’s obituary.
It was short. She remembered writing it. She had to pay for each word, and every word cost money, so it said almost nothing. It just indicated her mother’s name, age, and that she was survived by a daughter. There was no service, no one could be invited and there was no money to hold one.
He had read the words she wrote about her mother’s death. He had known she was alone in the world and let her be an orphan.
“Here.” Rowan reached past her, into the very bottom of the box. “This is the last one.”
He held it out to her. A bundle, thick as a brick, held together with a rubber band. Envelopes. Dozens of them. All the same size. All addressed in her father’s handwriting.
Birthday cards.
Every year, each one had her name on the front and nothing more.
She sat there with everything spread out across the floor.
She had held it together through all of it.
The noise that erupted from her came from deep within her wounded soul. Ugly, gasping, whole-body crying followed. She cried for the girl who had to skip meals. She cried for the teenager in the motel doing homework while her mother drank straight from the bottle.
Rowan didn’t tell her it was all right. He didn’t offer empty reassurances or say that her father had loved her, nor did he utter any of the clichés that people often used to console someone in pain. He moved closer and put his arm around her shoulders and stayed. That was all. He stayed.
She didn’t know how long it went on. Long enough that her throat hurt. When there was finally nothing left in her, she was hollowed out, her face swollen and her nose running.
After a while, she leaned her head against his shoulder. He didn’t move an inch. His shoulder was solid and warm. His hand slid up and down her arm. She leaned into him and breathed.
The space heater clicked off. The room began its slow slide toward cold. Neither of them got up to turn the heater back on.
“He knew my whole life,” she said at last. Her voice was raw.
“Yes.”
She thought about her mother. She had spent most of her years being angry at her mother. Then she’d feel bad for blaming her mother for doing the best she could. But now she understood she hadn’t done her best. She’d done her worst.
She’d come here and learned about Madeline, Gerald, and Evelyn, and she’d started to forgive her.
Now she didn’t know where to put any of it.
Her mother had let Leah grow up believing her father was dead.
Maybe it hadn’t been malice. Maybe it was pride, or shame, or the particular stubbornness of a woman who had been run out of a country and needed to believe she’d left for good.
Maybe Sandra had thought she was protecting them both. It didn’t matter why.
Her life was what it was. All the pain and loneliness happened. It couldn’t be forgotten or fixed.
And through all of it, quiet as a heartbeat, her father had been here.
“I want to stay,” she said. She lifted her head off his shoulder and looked at him. “I want to fix this place. The garden. The house. All of it. I don’t care what Madeline’s solicitor says. I want to stay.”
He gestured to the reports and photographs scattered across the carpet and her lap. “This is proof, Leah.”
“It’s proof he watched me.”
“It’s proof you’re his daughter.”
She didn’t see how stalking could be seen as evidence.
“What if he isn’t my biological father?”
Rowan reached over and picked up the first report, the one with her name on it.
Leah Ellsworth, age twelve. “Look at this. A man doesn’t hire a firm in Seattle to find a child and follow her for forty years if he thinks she isn’t his.
People can raise questions about a marriage registration all they like.
But this—” he gestured at the whole of it, “this is a man acknowledging his daughter every single year of his life. It’s documented. It’s dated.”
“It’s not a DNA test.”
“No. It’s not.” He looked at her steadily. “It’s not much, maybe, in a courtroom. But it’s something. It’s forty years of something. You’re not trying to ascend to the throne of England. You don’t have to be his biological kid to inherit.”
She wiped her face with the sleeve of her father’s sweater. Her head hurt. Her chest hurt.
Was it enough? She didn’t know, but maybe it was her father’s way of giving her the documentation she needed.
“It would have been nice if he left this in a place to actually be found,” she said with a watery laugh.
Rowan smiled. “I’m guessing he never expected Madeline to do what she’s doing.”
“He had time before his death to tell you,” she said.
“It might have been too painful,” he said. “He was on a lot of pain meds those last months. His mind wasn’t what it was.”
That sent a fresh wave of sadness through her. She wished she could have been there for him even though he’d never been around for her.
“Tomorrow, we call Whitfield. And you’re going to help me put every one of these books back.”
“Deal,” Rowan said with a grin.
Let Madeline come. Let her bring the solicitors and the archaic clauses and the money that had always been enough to make her annoyances disappear.
Leah was fighting back.