“They loved you?” I asked.
“Yes,” Anders said, and his voice broke on it. “Every single day.”
I closed my eyes.
“Mom told me I was adopted when I was six,” he said. “She kept your cross in her jewelry box, wrapped in tissue. On my eighteenth birthday, she gave it to me. She said, ‘Whoever put this in your blanket loved you very much.'”
“I wrote to the registry that spring. A letter came back. Same form you just saw.”
“MOTHER DECLINES CONTACT,” I said.
“I wrote again at twenty-five, and again at twenty-nine. Same form. And a letter from Danforth saying further inquiries might be treated as harassment.”
I let out a laugh that hurt my stitches.
“I wrote to the same registry every two years from 1998 on,” I said. “They always said they had no match. They said my file showed no children.”
“They were never going to match us,” he said. “Your father registered as your authorized representative. Every letter either of us sent went to the same office.”
