The answer was enough.
The old records about my mother were returned to the family archive after the review.
I kept a copy of her letter and the photograph of her outside the clinic.
For a while, I wondered whether to tell Eleanor the story when she was older.
Then I understood that it belonged to her, too, not as a debt but as part of the family she came from.
One evening, when Eleanor was almost three months old, Alexander arrived for a visit carrying nothing but his diaper bag.
He had learned to pack it himself, though he still checked with me about which blanket I preferred.
The three of us sat in the front room while rain tapped against the windows.
Eleanor slept between us in the cradle, her tiny face turned toward the light of the reading lamp.
Alexander watched her for a long time.
“I used to think I could repair things by fixing whatever was visible,” he said. “A gift, a payment, a solution.”
