It was organized.
Shelves lined the walls from top to bottom. Gray archival boxes. File folders with neat labels in Thomas’s careful handwriting. A narrow cedar chest on the floor. The smell was old paper and dust and something faintly medicinal, like dried lavender.
I felt the first flicker of unease then. Secrets are one thing. Curated secrets are another.
I pulled down the nearest box.
It was labeled: Anna – Personal.
I did not know an Anna.
Inside were photographs.
The first one was old, maybe forty years old. Thomas stood outside what looked like a hospital, much younger, thinner, his hair dark and thick. He was holding a baby wrapped in a yellow blanket. Beside him stood a young woman with long dark hair and tired eyes. She was smiling, but not at the camera. At him.
My knees nearly gave out.
I sat down hard on the hallway floor and kept looking.
There were more photographs. The same little girl at two, grinning in overalls. At five, missing her front teeth. At ten, sitting beside Thomas on a park bench, both of them eating ice cream. At sixteen, one arm around his shoulders.
On the back of one photo, in Thomas’s handwriting, were the words:
Anna’s high school graduation. She asked me to sit in the third row so I wouldn’t upset her mother.
My hands turned cold.
I opened another folder.
Birth certificate.
Anna Marie Hale. Father: Thomas Edwin Mercer.
I stared at the name until the letters blurred.
For a few seconds I heard nothing at all. Not the refrigerator humming. Not the traffic outside. Just a roaring in my ears, like my body had stepped out of itself.
Thomas had a daughter.
