I asked what he had been told about us. He said the story was that we had too many kids already and couldn’t manage another one. That was the part they gave him so he wouldn’t ask questions growing up.
He got up and went to a drawer in the living room. When he came back he had a small black-and-white photograph. It showed Mama and Daddy standing in front of the old barn with me as a toddler on Daddy’s hip. I pulled the matching photograph out of my purse, the one I had carried since I was a girl. They were the exact same picture, right down to the crease across the corner.
Earl set his copy next to mine on the table. “I kept this all these years because it was the only thing they let me have from before. I used to wonder if any of you ever wondered about me.”
We sat there looking at those two photographs for a long time. He told me he had a good life with the cousins and never wanted to cause trouble. I told him Mama never spoke of it again after she signed the papers. We both agreed that was how things were handled back then.
Before I left he wrote his phone number on a scrap of paper. I put it in my purse next to the card. On the drive home I kept checking the rearview mirror like the house might disappear. I still have not told my kids what I found. I keep thinking I will tomorrow, but tomorrow keeps turning into the next day.
The fields on either side of the road looked the same as they did when I was a girl, rows of dried corn stalks waiting for snow.
I kept the window down a crack and the cold air came in sharp against my face. The purse was on the seat beside me and the corner of the scrap paper stuck out just enough that I could see Earl’s writing. His hand had been steady when he wrote it. I could still taste the coffee he gave me, bitter and hot, and it mixed with the smell of the old vinyl seats in my car. The steering wheel was cold under my fingers even though the heater was running full blast. The wind picked up and rattled the loose door on the glove box. I reached over and pushed it shut without looking.
