Gerald suggested we meet at the house — Frank’s house, the one I had grown up in, which Gerald had a key to because Frank had trusted him with one years ago and never asked for it back.
I arrived first.
I stood in the kitchen and looked at the apple pancake pan still sitting on the drying rack from the last time Frank had made them for me, three weeks ago, before he was too weak to stand at the stove.
I didn’t touch it.
Gerald knocked even though he had a key.
A small performance of courtesy.
“Sweetheart.” He opened his arms in the doorway.
I let him hug me.
I kept my hands at my sides.
He stepped back and looked at my face with an expression of deep, practiced sorrow.
“I’m so sorry.
He was a good man.
The best I ever knew.”
“He was,” I said.
“Come in.”
We sat at the kitchen table.
I had made coffee.
Gerald wrapped both hands around his mug the way he always did, and for a moment he looked so familiar, so ordinary, so completely like the uncle I had known for forty years, that something in my chest pulled hard in the wrong direction.
Then I thought about Catherine Reyes.
“I’ve been going through some of his things,” I said.
“He left a lot of papers.”
“That sounds like Frank.” Gerald smiled.
“He kept everything.
Birthday cards from 1987, I wouldn’t be surprised.”
“I found some things I didn’t expect.”
A small shift.
Almost nothing.
The smile stayed but something behind his eyes adjusted.
“Oh?”
“Old photographs, mostly.
Some documents.” I kept my voice light.
“Did you know Frank had been married before he met my mother?”
Gerald set his mug down.
“Where did you hear that?”
“I found a birth certificate.
In his papers.” I watched his hands.
They were very still on the table.
“Her name was Catherine.
Catherine Reyes.”
“Frank mentioned her once or twice over the years.” His voice was measured.
“It was a painful chapter for him.
She passed away very young.
He didn’t like to talk about it.”
“Did you know her well?”
“Briefly.
This was a long time ago, Claire.”
“The birth certificate had my name on it.” I said it quietly, the way Frank would have said something important.
“Catherine was my biological mother.”
