We spent the rest of the evening examining everything in the storage box.
There weren't many things.
A few photographs.
Some school certificates.
Two birthday cards from Raymond.
And the letter.
But that letter changed the way we looked at every item.
Grant placed the photographs across his dining table.
I sat beside him, checking the backs for dates or writing.
Most had nothing.
One had a short message from Raymond.
My boys, always together.
It was written in blue ink.
I recognized the handwriting from the letter.
I turned the photograph over several times.
Then I noticed something.
There was a small mark near the bottom corner.
It looked like someone had written something and later tried to erase it.
I tilted the photograph toward the kitchen light.
A few letters became visible.
Eli.
That was all.
I looked at Grant.
"Do you see this?"
He leaned closer.
"Is that a name?"
"Maybe."
We studied it for several minutes.
Neither of us knew what it meant.
I placed the photograph beside the letter.
The name Elizabeth.
The letters Eli.
And Raymond's message about wanting us to know where we came from.
It was becoming difficult to believe these things were unrelated.
Grant picked up his phone.
"I'm going to look through the old family photographs online."
"What do you mean?"
"Mom used to post pictures of Dad. Maybe she uploaded something before she deleted it."
He began searching.
I continued sorting through the papers.
There was a school photograph of us at around five years old.
Another showed Raymond standing in front of the house.
Then I found a picture of the four of us at a local park.
I remembered that day.
Raymond had bought us ice cream.
Gwendolyn had complained about the mess.
I remembered Grant dropping his cone.
Raymond had laughed and bought him another.
Looking at the photograph now made my chest ache.
We had been happy.
At least when Raymond was there.
Grant suddenly stopped scrolling.
"Wesley."
I turned.
"What?"
"Look at this."
He showed me an old photograph posted on Gwendolyn's social media account.
It was from a family gathering many years earlier.
Raymond was standing beside Grandma Opal.
Gwendolyn was on the other side.
There was another woman in the background.
She was holding a small child.
I leaned closer.
"Who is that?"
"I don't know."
Grant zoomed in.
The woman's face became clearer.
She looked familiar in a way I couldn't explain.
Not because I recognized her.
Because something about her expression reminded me of the way Raymond looked in the photographs.
There was a tenderness in her eyes.
I looked at the date.
It had been posted shortly after our adoption.
"Could that be Elizabeth?"
Grant stared at the screen.
"Maybe."
We saved the photograph.
Then Grant searched through the comments.
Most were ordinary birthday messages.
But one comment stood out.
It was from an account belonging to a woman whose name was Elizabeth.
The message was simple.
I still think about those two boys every day.
I read it twice.
Then a third time.
Grant leaned back.
"That's not normal."
"No."
"Why would someone say that about us?"
I couldn't answer.
The account had very few public photographs.
The profile picture showed a woman standing beside a tree.
Her face was partly turned away.
We couldn't be certain it was the same person.
Grant clicked on the profile.
There were no recent posts.
The account appeared inactive.
I felt a strange mixture of hope and fear.
If Elizabeth knew something about us, perhaps she could explain the letter.
Perhaps she could tell us why Raymond had kept her name.
But what if she was simply someone who had known our family?
What if we were building an entire story from a few words?
I wanted to be careful.
Grant wanted answers.
He searched the name together with the town where we had grown up.
Several results appeared.
None seemed relevant.
Then he found an old community notice.
It mentioned a woman named Elizabeth who had volunteered at a children's center years earlier.
There was no photograph.
No information about her connection to us.
We didn't know whether it was the same person.
I wrote the name down.
Elizabeth.
Then I added the date of the photograph.
We needed more than guesses.
I looked again at Raymond's letter.
He had written that we deserved to know where we came from.
That sentence was becoming impossible to ignore.
I wondered whether he had planned to tell us before he died.
I wondered whether he had been prevented from doing so.
And I wondered why Gwendolyn had become so angry when I mentioned the letter.
The next morning, I called her again.
I had barely slept.
She answered quickly.
"What now?"
"I want to talk about Dad."
"There's nothing to discuss."
"He left us a letter."
Silence.
I continued.
"He said we deserved to know where we came from."
Gwendolyn took a slow breath.
"Your father was emotional."
"He mentioned someone named Elizabeth."
There was another pause.
This one lasted longer.
Then she asked:
"Where did you hear that name?"
I looked at Grant.
He was sitting across from me.
Neither of us had expected her to react that way.
I kept my voice steady.
"So you know her?"
"Don't involve yourself in things you don't understand."
"Was she connected to our adoption?"
Gwendolyn raised her voice.
"I said stop asking questions."
I felt my patience slipping.
"You told us our mother abandoned us."
"Because she did."
"Then why did Dad say we were wanted?"
For several seconds, there was no answer.
Then Gwendolyn spoke again.
"Your father had a habit of feeling sorry for people."
I stared at the wall.
"Who was he feeling sorry for?"
"That's enough, Wesley."
"Was it Elizabeth?"
She ended the call.
Again.
I placed the phone on the table.
Grant stood up.
"She knows who Elizabeth is."
"I think so."
"And she's frightened that we're getting closer."
I looked at the letter.
For twenty years, we had accepted the version of our childhood that Gwendolyn gave us.
We had believed our biological mother had walked away.
We had believed Raymond was simply the kind man who had rescued us.
We had believed that our adoption was a closed chapter.
But now there were too many unanswered questions.
The photograph.
The name.
The letter.
Grandma Opal's conversation.
And Gwendolyn's reaction.
I folded Raymond's letter carefully and placed it back inside the envelope.
Grant watched me.
"What are you going to do?"
I looked at the old family photograph on the table.
The woman in the background was still holding that child.
I didn't know who she was.
I didn't know why Raymond had remembered Elizabeth.
But I knew we couldn't continue living with a story that might have been invented for us.
"We need to find her."
Grant nodded.
For the first time, we were looking in the same direction.
And neither of us intended to stop until we understood why our father had spent his final years trying to tell us something our mother never wanted us to hear.
Click here to continue reading: PART 5: We Started Looking for Elizabeth, but the First Person We Found Was Someone Who Had Known Our Father
I Thought Bringing Her Birthday Flowers Might Finally Make Her See Me as Her Son
Part 4 of 20
