***”Open it,” I said.***
“You sound nervous.”
“I am always nervous.”
“About my birthday card?”
“About everything. I raised you.”
He laughed, then slid his finger under the flap.
I stood at the counter pretending to rinse dishes that were already clean.
He removed the card.
Then something else.
A folded letter.
***That was new.***
I stopped moving.
Adrian unfolded it.
The color drained from his face so quickly that it frightened me.
“Adrian?”
He read it once.
Then again, more slowly.
“Baby, what is it?”
He looked up at me with an expression I had never seen before.
Not exactly fear.
Not exactly sh0ck.
Something deeper.
Like a missing puzzle piece had suddenly dropped into place, and he did not like the picture.
***”It’s not the usual message,” he said.***
My stomach dropped.
He tightened his grip on the page.
“Mom… I know who sent them.”
The room seemed to go unnaturally quiet.
Even the refrigerator sounded distant.
I walked closer.
“Who?”
He swallowed.
“The letter is signed.”
My voice came out thin.
“Signed by who?”
He looked down at the bottom of the page.
***”Thomas.”***
The name meant nothing to me.
I held out my hand.
Adrian hesitated before giving me the letter.
It read:
**Adrian,**
If you are reading this, then you are 18, and I have kept my promise as long as I was meant to.
***First, happy birthday.***
*”Second, I owe you the truth, or at least enough of it for you to decide whether you want more.”*
*”Please go to Merrick and Rowe on Fulton Street and ask for the envelope left in your name. They have been instructed to give it to you once you become an adult.”*
*”You do not know me the way you think you might. But I knew someone who loved you very much.”*
*”I hope, in some small way, these birthdays helped you feel remembered.”*
*”Take care, son.”*
***Thomas.***
I read it twice.
Then a third time.
***”Take care, son.”***
Adrian had noticed those words too.
“You see why I thought of my dad, right?”
Of course I did.
A man’s full name.
A letter waiting at a law office.
A secret stretching across eighteen birthdays.
It sounded exactly like something an absent father might do when he wanted redemption without having done any of the parenting.
Something bitter rose in me.
“He’s got a lot of nerve,” I said.
***Adrian’s eyes lifted. “So you think it is him?”***
“No,” I answered too quickly.
Then added, “I don’t know.”
He dropped heavily into a kitchen chair.
“What if it is?”
I looked at my son, legally an adult for only a few hours and suddenly looking twelve again.
I knew I had two choices.
I could dismiss it and tell him to forget the whole thing.
Or I could face it with him.
So I sat across from him.
“Then we find out.”
We drove there that afternoon.
For most of the trip, Adrian alternated between nervous chatter and long silences.
