Rose was eighty.
Small.
Thin.
White hair pinned loosely at the back of her head.
When I entered the room, she looked at me once and began to cry.
Not gradually.
Immediately.
“Oh,” she whispered.
Her hands shook.
“Oh, my baby.”
Every hair on my arms rose.
I sat across from her.
“You’re Rose?”
She nodded.
“You’re my mother?”
Her mouth trembled.
“Yes.”
I wanted to feel something enormous.
Love.
Recognition.
Anger.
Instead, I felt numb.
“Why did you leave
me?”
Rose looked toward the window.
“Because your father was going to kill you.”
There it was again.
That sentence.
“Who was my father?”
Rose shut her eyes.
“A man named Thomas Vale.”
I had never heard the name.
“He owned half the textile factories in this county back then,” she continued.
“Married.
Powerful.
My brother Harold worked for him.”
I thought of Margaret’s husband.
