We talked for another two hours. She told me about the house she grew up in, the pantry where she used to hide and cry. She told me she had a big family but nobody ever talked about me. “I think they were ashamed,” she said. “I never was.”

When we finally hugged goodbye, she held on for an extra beat. She said, “I’m just glad you’re okay.”

I took the letters back to my hotel. A cheap place near the highway. I put the stack on the desk and stared at it for an hour before I could touch the rubber band. When I slid it off, it snapped. Envelopes spilled across the bedspread.

I picked them up one by one and stacked them. Then I counted.

One hundred and twelve.

I counted again to be sure. One hundred and twelve envelopes, all addressed to the same agency in the same handwriting. All stamped “Return to Sender.”

I started opening them. The first one was dated a year after I was born. It said, “I just want to know if she is okay. Please tell me she is okay.” The next one, a few months later, asked for a picture.

Then one for my fifth birthday. Then one for every birthday after.

One from 1987 said, “She would be in sixth grade now. I hope she has friends. I hope she is happy.”

Another from 1995: “Twenty-one today. I know you can’t tell me what she looks like. But if she ever asks, please tell her I loved her.”

One that looked like it was sent around the time I graduated high school asked, “Did she get a diploma? Is she okay? I think about her every single day.”

I opened them out of order. Some I could barely focus on through the tears.

And then I found the most recent one. Dated three days before we met.

It was shorter than the others. It said, “I am running out of time. If you get this, please call me. I don’t have much longer.”

That one also had “Return to Sender” stamped on it.

I stayed up all night reading. I laid every envelope out on the bed, arranged by date. Fifty years of trying. Fifty years of getting the same red stamp.

I thought about my life. The parents who raised me. The birthday cakes, the Christmas mornings, the cap and gown. Every one of those days, my birth mother was writing a letter she already knew would never be opened.

And I never knew.

I didn’t call her the next morning. I didn’t call my adoptive mom either. I sat on that hotel bed with a hundred and twelve letters around me, trying to wrap my head around what it means to be wanted that hard.

She never stopped. Not once.