The Fourth Plate

They read the letters together because Tess insisted. Mara wanted to arrange them by date first; Daniel wanted to know the worst immediately. Tess laid three mugs on the table and said that if their mother had kept this alone for fifty years, they could at least take half an hour together.

Ruth had been seventeen when Joseph was born. Her father had arranged a stay with distant cousins, then an adoption through an agency. The earliest letter was addressed to that agency in 1975. Ruth asked whether the baby was well. A typed reply said the placement was successful and further information was unavailable.

There were birthday cards, never posted. Eighteen of them.

“Why keep writing?” Daniel asked.

Mara looked at him. “Because she was his mother.”

“She was ours, too.”

The last papers were recent: a tracing service acknowledgment, a letter granting permission to exchange contact details, and a note signed Julian Mercer. Mara brought the unopened April envelope from the dresser. This time Tess nodded.

Dear Ruth, it began. I’m not sure what to call you yet. Thank you for telling me about the willow tree. My parents had an apple tree, and I was forever falling out of that.

He taught music. He lived ninety miles away. His adoptive parents were both dead. He had a daughter named Wren, who was twenty and studying engineering. He wanted to meet, if Ruth still did.

At the bottom he had written a telephone number.

“She never told him about us,” Daniel said, rereading the page.

“We don’t know that,” Tess replied.

“She never told us about him.”

Mara took plates from the cupboard because her hands needed work. She set four places before she noticed. Their mother’s place, beside the window, waited with its familiar chipped plate.

Daniel saw it and turned away.

They ate soup without tasting much. Afterward, Tess gathered the birthday cards and slipped them back into their envelope with a care that made Mara’s throat hurt.

“We should tell him she died,” Tess said.

“By telephone?” Daniel asked.

“How else?”

Mara looked at the number. She had negotiated contracts worth more than this house, had spoken calmly to furious people in glass meeting rooms. Her hand shook as she picked up her phone.

“Tomorrow,” she said.

For once, neither of the others accused her of postponing something difficult.