Would Adelaide be willing to tell her about the baby?
Adelaide read the letter twice and set it beside George’s watch.
Three days later, she offered an hour on Saturday.
Melinda arrived carrying a small cloth bag. She waited on the step until Adelaide invited her inside.
They sat at opposite ends of the dining table.
From the bag, Melinda took a faded yellow blanket. The binding had frayed to threads in places, and the crooked bird had lost most of one wing.
Adelaide touched the stitches with one finger.
For a moment, she was a daughter again, watching her mother squint over a needle under a bright lamp.
“Yes,” she said.
Melinda’s shoulders shook once.
“My adoptive mother said it came with me. She thought someone at the hospital must have loved me.”
“Someone did.”
“Why didn’t you keep me?”
The question came out harshly. Melinda closed her eyes.
“I’m sorry. That’s not fair.”
“You’re allowed to ask.”
Adelaide kept her hand beside the blanket.
“I had Phillip at home. George was working nights. We weren’t able to adopt a baby, and loving you didn’t change that.”
Melinda nodded, but the disappointment was visible.
“I wanted there to be a reason somebody couldn’t find me. Something bigger.”
“There was a family ready for you. Your parents. I was glad when they came.”
“My mother kept saying that. That being adopted didn’t mean I’d been unwanted by everyone.”
Adelaide waited.
“She died before I started looking properly. I thought finding you might finally make me believe her.”
Adelaide drew the blanket a little closer.
“You were never responsible for making adults stay, Melinda.”
Tears fell onto Melinda’s clasped hands.
After a while, she said, “And you weren’t responsible for what happened to me before you met me.”
“No.”
“I knew that. Somewhere, I knew.”
The hour became ninety minutes. Adelaide told her about feeding schedules, a stubborn hiccup, and how the infant had seemed determined to free one foot from every blanket.
Melinda laughed once through her tears.
When she stood to leave, she did not ask to be forgiven.
“May I write again?”
“Yes,” Adelaide said. “You may.”
Phillip’s first honest conversation with his mother happened in the garden behind Rosie’s building, where Adelaide had been helping plant beans.
He crouched beside her, still in his work clothes.
“I liked that Melinda said the things I didn’t want to say.”
Adelaide pressed soil around a seedling.
He kept going.
