Ellen called on a Wednesday evening.
She had a question that made my hands go cold.
“Would you like to come to our house Sunday?”
I leaned against the kitchen counter.
“For dinner?”
“For dinner. Nothing formal.”
“Who'll be there?”
“Paul. Our daughter, Hannah. Our son, Matthew. Hannah's little girl, Lucy.”
I closed my eyes.
A little girl.
I had seen her picture on Ellen's phone, but I hadn't yet heard her voice.
“Does she know about me?”
“Only that I'm getting to know someone in my birth family. We won't make her responsible for any of this.”
That answer eased something in my chest.
“Then I'd like to come.”
I asked whether I should bring anything.
Ellen said a pie would be lovely.
I hadn't made pie since Roy died.
But Mama's old recipe book was on the pantry shelf.
I made a peach pie Saturday afternoon.
The crust cracked when I lifted it.
I patched it with a piece of dough and hoped nobody would notice.
Sunday morning I put on a blue dress I used to wear to church.
Then I changed into a yellow blouse and dark slacks.
The blue dress felt too much like attending another funeral.
I wanted this day to belong to the living.
Ellen and Paul had a brick house outside San Antonio.
A garden stretched along the fence.
There were tomatoes growing in tall metal cages, exactly as Paul had described.
The front door opened before I rang.
Ellen stood there with flour on one cheek.
“You came.”
“Of course I came. I have your pie.”
She hugged me carefully.
I froze for an instant.
Then I put my arms around her.
The embrace didn't feel like fifty-five years rushing back.
It felt like holding a real person whose shoulder was warm beneath my hand.
Paul came from the kitchen carrying a dish towel.
Behind him stood a young woman with dark hair.
“This is Hannah,” Ellen said.
Hannah smiled.
“I'm glad you could come, Doll.”
“I'm glad too.”
She didn't call me Grandma.
I appreciated that nobody had told her to.
Matthew arrived a few minutes later with a bag of ice and a baseball cap pushed back on his head.
He shook my hand.
“Mom says you work at a gas station.”
“I do.”
“I'm a delivery driver. I know what the morning rush is like.”
We discussed coffee, early shifts, and people who tried to pay for one candy bar with a hundred-dollar bill.
It was an ordinary conversation.
I almost cried from gratitude.
Lucy came in carrying a coloring book.
She was seven.
She stood behind Hannah's knee and examined me.
“Are you the lady who makes pie?”
“I am today.”
“Can I have some?”
“After dinner, if your mama says yes.”
Hannah laughed.
“That's the rule.”
Lucy disappeared to the living room, satisfied.
We sat down to chicken, green beans, and potatoes.
There was nothing ceremonial about it.
The salt shaker went missing.
Matthew spilled water on a napkin.
Paul argued that biscuits were better than rolls.
Ellen reminded him she'd made rolls because he had eaten all the biscuits on Friday.
I listened to their voices overlap.
I thought about the hundreds of dinners I'd eaten alone after Roy died.
I had not realized how quiet my own kitchen had become.
After the meal Hannah helped me clear plates.
She had Ellen's straight eyebrows.
“I hope this isn't too much,” she said.
“It is a lot.”
“We can slow down.”
I set a plate on the counter.
“Your mother said the same thing.”
Hannah smiled.
“She's good at letting people decide for themselves.”
I thought about the decision taken from me when I was seventeen.
The contrast made me turn toward the sink for a moment.
Hannah didn't ask what was wrong.
She simply handed me the dish towel.
Later, Lucy asked me to color a picture of a house.
We sat on the rug.
She gave me the orange crayon.
“That's the best one,” she said solemnly.
“Then why are you giving it to me?”
“Because you're company.”
I drew a crooked roof.
Lucy informed me that houses did not have orange roofs.
“Some do,” I said.
“Where?”
“Somewhere. I haven't seen every house in Texas.”
She considered this.
Then she colored a purple cat beside my house.
Children, I learned, didn't require grand speeches.
They wanted you to take their questions seriously.
Before dessert Ellen brought out a box of old family albums.
She asked whether I wanted to look.
I said yes, though my stomach tightened.
There was Ellen at six, missing her front teeth.
Ellen at twelve, standing beside a bicycle.
Ellen in a graduation gown.
Ellen and Paul on their wedding day.
Ellen holding baby Hannah.
Ellen in a hospital bed after Matthew was born, looking exhausted and proud.
My throat ached.
Each photograph contained a day I had missed.
I couldn't get those days back by looking at paper.
But I could learn how she had lived them.
I asked questions.
What had she liked at school?
Had she been afraid of the water?
Who taught her to drive?
Ellen answered some.
Paul and the children answered others.
Sometimes their memories contradicted each other.
Matthew insisted Ellen once drove through the garage door.
Ellen claimed she'd only bumped it.
Hannah brought out a picture showing the dent.
We laughed until Paul had to wipe his eyes.
When the evening grew quiet, Ellen took me out to the garden.
“Are you all right?” she asked.
“I think so.”
“You went quiet during the albums.”
“I was thinking about what I missed.”
She nodded.
“I wonder about that too.”
I reached for a tomato leaf and rubbed it between my fingers.
“I don't want our next years to be spent apologizing for years we couldn't control.”
“Neither do I.”
“Will your children mind if I visit again?”
“They told me they hoped you would.”
I looked through the window.
Lucy was showing Paul her purple cat.
“I'll bring another pie,” I said.
“Bring yourself. That's enough.”
After dinner, Paul showed me a shelf of books in the hall.
Ellen had kept a copy of the first novel she'd bought with her own money.
The cover was bent and the pages had yellowed.
“She read it three times in one summer,” Paul said.
“Only twice,” Ellen called from the kitchen.
I pulled it from the shelf and read the dedication on the inside cover.
Miriam had written, For Ellen, who is never afraid of a question.
I ran a finger beneath the words.
It was a lovely thing to tell a daughter.
I couldn't stop thinking that Miriam herself had been afraid of one enormous question.
But this wasn't the time to bring that up.
We had already spent weeks trying to understand the past.
The family was enjoying an ordinary Sunday.
I returned the book to its place.
Matthew offered to show me photographs from a camping trip he'd taken.
I followed him to the living room.
There were mountains, a muddy road, a tent that had blown halfway across a campsite, and a dog looking offended by rain.
“Your mother didn't come?” I asked.
“She says camping is what people did before houses.”
Ellen laughed from the hallway.
“I stand by that.”
I told Matthew about trips Roy and I used to take in his pickup.
We drove to the coast and bought fried fish from small roadside stands.
Once the truck broke down so badly we had to sleep in the cab while waiting for the mechanic.
Matthew said it sounded miserable.
“It was,” I agreed. “But Roy kept us laughing.”
Hannah brought over a photograph of herself as a child wearing a paper crown.
“Mom made this for my sixth birthday,” she said.
Ellen groaned.
“The crown wouldn't stay on.”
Hannah laughed.
“She used so much tape I had to cut it off.”
I looked at the picture of a laughing little girl.
I wondered what kind of birthday parties I would have given Ellen.
Then I wondered whether I'd have had enough money for a cake.
I might have worked extra shifts.
I might have needed help from Roy or Mama.
I might have made mistakes.
The life I missed wasn't guaranteed to have been easy.
It was simply a life I'd never been permitted to try.
I set the photograph down carefully.
When we stepped outside, Ellen noticed I was quieter.
“Are you thinking about the old days?”
“Yes.”
“Do you want to go home?”
“No. I want to stay a little longer.”
We sat on the porch swing.
She pointed out the rosemary bush Paul planted beside the steps.
She said it had survived two freezes and a year when the dog dug under it.
“I'd have given up,” I said.
“Paul wouldn't.”
I watched the branches move in the wind.
“What are you thinking?” she asked.
“That there are things worth tending even when the roots had a hard start.”
She took my hand.
We didn't try to explain the thought any further.
From inside came the sound of Lucy asking whether there was any pie left.
Ellen called out that she could have one more small piece.
I laughed because my peach pie had nearly disappeared.
I had spent years baking for neighbors and church suppers.
I had never expected the most ordinary pie to become part of a day I'd remember for the rest of my life.
I kept the dinner napkin in my purse until I reached home.
It smelled faintly of peach pie.
On the drive home I pulled into a rest stop and cried.
Not because the dinner had gone badly.
Because it had gone well.
I'd met people who did not owe me a place in their lives, and they had made room anyway.
When I returned home, there was a voicemail from Denise.
A court had approved the next step in Ellen's request for information.
It was not a final ruling about the adoption.
But records might soon be reviewed through the required process.
I saved the message.
Then I put Lucy's picture on my refrigerator.
She had signed it in large uneven letters.
FOR DOLL.
Click here to continue reading: PART 8: THE DNA RESULTS ARRIVED, AND THE TRUTH LEFT NO ROOM FOR THE STORY MY MOTHER HAD TOLD
THE WOMAN IN THE BACK PEW WALKED TOWARD ME WHILE MY MOTHER WAITED TO BE BURIED
Part 7 of 12
