“No.”
“Rosie found inconsistencies in your birth records.”
“No.”
“She found payments to a private clinic in Vermont, a sealed adoption petition, and correspondence between your mother and another man.”
“No.”
“Claire—”
“Stop saying my name like that.”
“Like what?”
“Like you already know who I am and I don’t.”
His eyes filled.
That frightened me more than the letter.
Ben had always been the steady one. When we were children, he climbed trees first so he could tell me which branches were safe. When Rosie got lost during a crowded Fourth of July festival at age eight, Ben found her sitting beneath a lemonade stand before the police did. When my mother died, he slept on the floor outside my bedroom because I was afraid to be alone.
Now he looked as lost as I felt.
I grabbed the letter from him.
There were four handwritten pages, all in Rosie’s careful print. Her letters were rounded and deliberate, each word spaced evenly. As a child, she had pressed so hard with pencils that she tore holes in notebooks. Even now, she wrote as though every sentence deserved to be carved into stone.
I began again.
Claire, if you are reading this, I may be dead. Dad killed Mom, and without knowing it, you gave him the perfect alibi.
My stomach twisted.
I kept reading.
