I sat back down. I had to.
“Did you know?” I asked him. “Did you know who he was? Where he went? All those years?”
Dr. Hale looked at Grandma.
“Every Christmas,” Grandma said quietly, “I sent Thomas a card. With a picture of Michael inside. Just one picture. No letter. No return address. Frank didn’t know about it. Nobody did.”
“Fifty-one years of Christmas cards,” Dr. Hale said. “I have every one of them. In a shoebox in my closet. Michael’s first Christmas. Michael in a cowboy hat. Michael with no front teeth. Michael graduating from high school. Michael’s wedding.” He looked at me. “A little boy in a Cincinnati Reds jersey, holding a baseball bat bigger than he was. Michael’s son. Daniel.”
My knees went weak.
“I knew your name before you could walk,” he said.
“And Ruth?” I asked. “Did she know?”
“I gave her the pictures,” Dr. Hale said. “Once a year. We’d meet at a diner in Millbrook, in a back booth, the week after Christmas. She’d look at the picture for an hour. She’d touch it with her fingers. And then she’d give it back to me, because she couldn’t take it home. Her husband never knew. Her daughter never knew.”
