***
Our dearest Natalie,
This gift is from your mother and me, with all our love. And it is from Nancy, who persuaded us that it was what you deserved to have.
We will give you the summer—this summer of your graduation—to make the search you want to make for your own past.
The box contains all the documents we have. They are very few, and your search, I'm afraid, will be a difficult and perhaps a painful one.
Your job at my office begins, as you know, next Monday. I need your help there, and I think you need the experience there to make your choice of a profession a reasoned and meaningful one. But I have scheduled your work this summer to run only through each Thursday at noon. So you will have three and a half days of each weekend to do whatever you must.
I have opened a checking account in your name and placed enough money there to make possible whatever traveling you will find necessary. The checkbook is also in the box.
You will find, also, a set of keys. I have leased a car for your use this summer as well.
You are mature, sensitive, and responsible. We wish you success in whatever journeys you make in these next three months. But we want you to know, also, that what you find is not important to us. You are our daughter, and our friend as well. We love you for being Natalie, and that's all that matters to us.
Both of her parents had signed the letter. Natalie was crying by the time she read their signatures. She folded the paper again, took the bouquet of bright ribbons from her hair, and hugged them.
"Thank you," she said. "Thank you."
Then she whispered also, "I'm sorry."
8
MUCH LATER, in her room alone, Natalie opened the box again. She felt curiously frightened. It was what she had wanted; now, holding the clues to her own past in her hands, she felt uncertain. Paul had said, "Why bother? The present is enough. Today is enough." And perhaps it was, after all. Tallie's sculpture sat on her desk like a symbol of an unopened tomorrow—a commencement—surrounded by the simple, unobstructed lines of today. There seemed none of yesterday's secrets in the bronze.
But she wanted the yesterdays, though she feared them. She felt as she had, years before, on her first day of school, clutching the security of her mother's firm hand, terrified, puzzled, not knowing if she would like what she found in this new world, not knowing if it would like her. Still, she had finally pushed her mother's hand away, then, and whispered, "Go on. I'm okay." As once her father had left her alone in an examining room, with things that had filled her with fear and pain.
She unfolded the first paper. It was, as the letter had been, typed by her father on his office stationery.
To Whom It May Concern:
My adopted daughter, Natalie C. Armstrong (no, thought Natalie. You have always called me "My daughter") is undertaking to investigate her natural parentage. She is doing this with the permission and understanding of myself and of her mother.
I would appreciate your cooperation in providing her with any helpful information that might be available to you.
Sincerely,
Alden'T. Armstrong, M.D.
The next paper was obviously older. It was marred at its borders by torn places, and the edges were discolored. It was dated July 10, 1960. Two months before I was born, thought Natalie.
The letterhead was oddly familiar. Harvey, Mac-Pherson, and Lyons, Attorneys at Law, Branford, Maine. Hal MacPherson was her father's lawyer; the MacPhersons were family friends. They lived two blocks away; Natalie had dated their son a couple of times when he was home on college vacations. What had the MacPhersons to do with her birth? It was disquieting, that all these years, perhaps, the MacPhersons had known something of Natalie that she herself had not known. Not fair. Of course, the fact that she had been adopted had never been a secret. But the MacPhersons? She had always called him Uncle Hal, affectionately. And he had known more of her than she had been permitted to know? Why am I angry? Natalie thought. Is this what Dad meant when he said the search would be a painful one? She smoothed the letter with her hands and began to read.
HARVEY, MACPHERSON, AND LYONS,
ATTORNEYS AT LAW
30 Bay Street, Branford, Maine
102 Caldwell Avenue July 10, 1960
Branford, Maine
Dear Alden:
Please forgive me if I am intruding in a personal matter. But Pat, my wife, is a friend of Kay's, and she has been aware of the difficulties you and Kay have encountered in dealing with the state adoption agency.
Although you and I don't know each other well, I am certainly familiar with your reputation professionally as well as through the community services that you have contributed to Branford since you have come here. If I can be of service to you in regard to the process of adoption, I would like to offer my availability.
I don't know how familiar you are with the process of so-called private adoptions. This is a term, as you perhaps know, applied to those adoptions arranged without going through the official procedures of an agency. There are very often disadvantages to private adoptions; notably, the lack of extensive screening and matching procedures that agencies provide.
On the other hand, there are particular advantages in the case of people like Kay and yourself, for whom agency procedures have become long and frustrating. I would be happy to meet with you and your wife to discuss the pros and cons of private adoption if you would like.
But I am writing this letter because it has recently been brought to my attention, through a lawyer in the northern part of the state, to whom I was talking recently about different matters, that a child will be born shortly—I believe this fall—whose family has sought his advice about private adoption placement. I know nothing about how much importance to place on genetics in such a circumstance; you, as a physician, are much more qualified to deal with that question than I. But the lawyer that I mentioned seemed to find that a matter of concern, and mentioned that this particular infant will be born to parents of substantial intelligence and good health.
If you and Kay would like to talk about this further, please feel free to call me at my office. If it is something that does not interest you, I will understand, and hope, as I said, that you will forgive the intrusion.
In the meantime, let me take this opportunity to congratulate you on the presentation that you made the other night at the meeting of the Medical-Legal Committee of the Bar Association. A fine job; Branford is indeed fortunate to have you in our midst.
Very Sincerely,