Chapter 4: What the Paper Said
Natalie didn't reach for the folded paper.
Not yet.
"What's in it?" she asked.
"Open it and see."
"I'd rather you tell me first."
Arthur looked at her for a moment.
Then he nodded, as if that was the right answer.
As if he'd been hoping she'd say that rather than just grabbing for it.
"It's a letter," he said.
"Daniel wrote it eight years ago.
He asked me to hold onto it.
He said—" Arthur cleared his throat.
"He said that if his daughter ever found her way back to us, he wanted her to have something from him in his own words.
Not secondhand.
Not filtered through anyone else."
"Eight years ago." Natalie did the math quickly.
"That would have been — I would have been seventeen."
"Yes."
"Why didn't he — why didn't someone find me then?
I wasn't hidden.
I was right there.
We were in the same town my whole life."
"Were you?" Arthur asked quietly.
Natalie opened her mouth.
Closed it.
She thought about the moves.
There had been four of them before she turned twelve.
Always to a new neighborhood, always a new school.
Her mother had called it fresh starts.
Natalie had called it exhausting and eventually stopped asking why.
"Your mother was very careful," Arthur said.
It wasn't an accusation.
Just a fact, placed gently on the table beside the letter.
"She was protecting me," Natalie said.
The words came out automatically.
Then she heard them.
"Or she thought she was."
"I believe she thought so, yes."
"From what?
From a father who wanted me?"
Arthur didn't answer that directly.
"Daniel had some difficulties when he was young.
He made mistakes.
He was not a perfect man." He paused.
"But he was not what your mother told you he was.
He did not leave.
He was asked to leave, and then the door was locked behind him."
Natalie looked at the letter on the table.
"He's gone, isn't he," she said.
Not a question.
"Four years ago." Arthur's voice didn't break, but it thinned slightly at the edges.
"His heart.
It was very quick.
He didn't suffer."
The tea in Natalie's cup had gone cold.
She hadn't noticed.
"So I never get to—" She stopped herself.
"No," Arthur said.
"I'm sorry.
You don't."
She picked up the letter.
Unfolded it.
The handwriting was neat and slightly old-fashioned, the kind of penmanship they didn't teach anymore.
Her eyes moved over the first line and then she had to stop and breathe.
*If you're reading this, then you found your way back.
I always believed you would.
You have your mother's stubbornness and, I'm told, my eyes.*
She set it face-down on the table.
"I can't read it here," she said.
"That's all right."
"I need—" She pressed her fingers against her mouth for a moment.
"I need a minute."
"Take as many as you need." Arthur signaled quietly to the server.
"I'll get us more tea."
It was such a small, ordinary thing to do.
Natalie almost laughed.
She almost cried.
She did neither.
She just sat there while the server came and went, and the piano kept playing, and the old man across from her — her grandfather, she was only now beginning to understand — waited without rushing her.
When she could speak again, she asked, "Did he know?
At the end?
Did he know I was still out there somewhere?"
"Yes," Arthur said.
"He never stopped believing it."
She turned the letter back over.
Read the first line again.
*If you're reading this, then you found your way back.*
Outside the tea shop window, a woman walked past pushing a stroller.
A man held a door open for a stranger.
The ordinary world, doing its ordinary things.
"I want to know everything," Natalie said.
"From the beginning.
All of it."
Arthur wrapped both hands around his fresh cup of tea.
"Then we'll need more than one afternoon," he said.
"I have time," Natalie said.
"I have nothing but time."
Arthur looked at her — really looked at her — and for just a moment his eyes went bright in a way that had nothing to do with sadness.
"You have his eyes," he said.
"I noticed in the bank.
May you like
I didn't let myself think it.
But I noticed."
