It was full of letters.
Seventeen years of letters. Birthday cards, two a year, one for each of us, every single year since we were four years old. Photographs enclosed — a woman, younger at first, then older, holding signs with our names. Letters that began “My darling boys, I don’t know if you’ll ever read this, but I will never stop writing.” Letters begging for contact. Letters that got more desperate, then more resigned, then simply faithful — a mother writing into a silence, year after year, never knowing if a word reached us.
They had all reached Beatrice.
Our biological mother — her name was Nadia — had not abandoned us. When our father died, she had been nineteen, widowed, penniless, and buried in a grief she couldn’t climb out of, and she had placed us temporarily, meaning to come back when she could stand. And when she came back — months later, on her feet — Beatrice had already secured the adoption and the trust, and told Nadia that we’d been placed with a loving family, that we were happy, that the kindest thing she could do was stay away and not confuse us.
