I made it home that night. How is unknown to me. It was only after dinner,as I sat up staring into the inky night, that my eyes caught sight in thewindow of the box's reflection, the very one that Angelo had placed inmy  hands that morning.  Taking it up in my hands, my fumblingfingers worked the lock. Soon the lid was opened and my eyes found thecontents revealed.

Photographs, their corners creased and bent from being fingered continually,stare up at me. I remove them, one by one, a montage of my first six monthsof life.  Under the photographs, neatly bundled were several envelopes, yellowed from age, the handwriting that of my mother's, a single name onthe  front, my father's.  Since there was no postmark on anyof the letters, they must have reached my father via Sydney or Broots.The risk those men took.

Extracting the first letter from its protective sleeve, I slowly unfoldit and scan the contents. Mother reports that all's well with her, andshe has slipped into the persona of Payne Hunter. Yet she wanted to knowwhat possessed him to select those names for her and how she could hearhis laughing  at her question. The next couple of letters dealt withhow she is coping at  a normal life, if that's what she is experiencingcan be called. The letters  then take on a more serious tone, howshe felt the baby moved, heard the baby's heartbeat, and how he wasn'tthere to share in it. Then she wrote somet hing that I never would havebelieved, if I had not read it, how she never s hould have allowed himto talk her into this arrangement and that she regret ted doing so.

I continued to read the letters from her and wondered about his responses to her. I never found any letters in her belongings at home but then again mother tended to be rather secretive about her past. When I took the letter, that was dated two days after my birth as well as mother's birthday, Ifelt  the tears starting to well up in my eyes.  She wrote describingme, telling  him that I was small but healthy, and perfectly formed,all ten fingers and  toes. A tiny porcelain doll. A crown of darkhair, big blue eyes, tiny lips  that form a bow and cheeks soft aspeach blossoms. My mother's words chille d me. How her heart must haveached as she committed those words to paper, k nowing that he would neverhold me and only see me through her eyes and thos e close to her.

Her next letter detailed my christening, six weeks after my birth ona cold day in February. It wasn't a big celebration, the guest list wassmall.  Mother, Sydney, Broots and Debbie, as well as the priest.Mother related that Debbie held me and at the moment when the priest pouredthe water over my  forehead a shaft of sunlight shone through thestained glass window straight  into me.  My mother took it asan omen that perhaps Grandmother had sent that ray of sunlight as a blessingon her namesake. Mother then continued,  that I was growing strongand chubby, that my cheeks had a pink glow to them;  that I was startingto smile and coo.

The letters were long and detailed, filled with the excitement of watchingthat which they had created, grow and change before her very eyes. Howshe  loved being a mother, that this, freedom was a whole differentworld. Yet each time she wrote to him it was getting more and more painfuland she didn't want the situation to continue.   She wanted himwith her, us and yet she  knew the danger that would follow if heleft that miserable place, again.

Drawing the blanket from the back of the couch around my shoulders,I buried my head in my hands and wept for I had had no sleep and the firstrays of dawn could be seen coming in through the window.  The shockof what I read  was still with me, that I hastely reached for theglass of water that sat on the table in front of me and I knocked the boxto the floor.  The box clattered to the hard wooden floor, the soundof it causing me to jump.  Through  blurred vision, I fearedthat I had damaged it, for the bottom of it pulled  away.  Reachingwith trembling fingers, I brought it up into my lap cradling it as if infant,I discovered a false bottom. Nestled inside--another red  notebook.
 
 
 

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Part 5