She kept the warning with her notebook.

I asked why she had never come forward.

Harriet said she had contacted the state licensing office when the clinic began to close, but she received a form letter saying her complaint could not be substantiated without original records.

She had been raising children and could not afford to lose her license in a fight with the clinic’s lawyers.

I wanted to tell her that she should have tried harder.

But I looked at her hands, which trembled as she held the old notebook, and realized how little I knew about the cost of speaking then.

She had tried in the way she could.

Dana asked whether Harriet would consent to the notebook being copied and examined by an independent document specialist.

Harriet agreed on the condition that the original remain in her possession until a lawful process required otherwise.

We discussed custody, dates, and who had accessed it during the intervening years.

When she left, she turned back and said something I did not expect.

“Your mother came to the clinic once after the adoption.”

I stared at her.

“Evelyn?”

Harriet nodded.

“She asked the director whether the child’s first mother knew the baby was alive.”

“What did he say?”

Harriet’s face tightened.

“He told her the question could destroy the placement, and she left crying.”

I went home with a story that made me love my mother more and understand her less.

Leah helped me search Evelyn’s desk the next day, but we agreed that private letters unrelated to the case would remain private.

My mother had left journals, recipe cards, tax statements, and old birthday invitations mixed in no particular order.

At the back of a wooden drawer, beneath a bundle of canceled checks, we found a packet tied with lavender string.

The envelopes were addressed to a woman named Ruth Delgado.

None bore a stamp.

The first letter, dated a month after my adoption, began with an apology.

Evelyn wrote that she had been told my biological mother was dead and that she had believed the agency’s documents when she accepted the placement.

She said a nurse had later raised doubts but refused to provide a name or an address.

Evelyn begged the unknown woman, if she existed, to know that the baby was loved.

The second letter was written after my fifth birthday.

Evelyn described how I wanted to become a firefighter because I liked the red trucks that came to school.