Chapter 6 - The Woman Who Called Him Charles
We found an old cassette player at Dad's house.
Mom refused to come.
Dad placed the tape inside.
For several seconds, there was only static.
Then a man's voice.
Charles.
“Robert, if you're hearing this, Linda didn't tell you.”
Dad stopped the tape.
His hand shook.
“Keep going,” I said.
He pressed play.
Charles spoke about 1980.
About leaving town.
About believing someone wanted him gone.
But the story wasn't about crime.
It was about shame.
Our grandfather had discovered Charles was secretly helping Linda leave an abusive relationship.
A relationship none of us knew existed.
The man wasn't Dad.
His name was Thomas Vale.
My mother's college boyfriend.
Charles had confronted him.
Thomas threatened both of them.
The night Charles disappeared, he hadn't been running from police.
He had been running from Thomas.
Then came the sentence that changed everything.
“Linda was pregnant when I left.”
Dad stopped the tape again.
I couldn't breathe.
Mom had married Dad eighteen months after Charles disappeared.
I had been born eleven years later.
So the pregnancy couldn't have been me.
“Who was the baby?” I asked.
Dad looked devastated.
“I never knew.”
The tape continued.
Charles said Linda had lost the pregnancy.
Or at least that was what she told everyone.
Then:
“But Linda, if you ever hear this, you know that's not the whole truth.”
Static swallowed the next section.
The recording resumed minutes later.
Charles said he had returned years afterward because he discovered Linda had been looking for him.
Then the tape ended.
No explanation.
No second baby.
No answer.
The next morning, a woman arrived at our house.
She was around sixty.
Silver hair.
Dark coat.
She looked at Ethan through the window before knocking.
When I opened the door, she said:
“Is that Charles?”
Every muscle in my body tightened.
“No.”
She looked embarrassed.
“I'm sorry.”
“Who are you?”
“My name is Margaret Vale.”
Vale.
I gripped the door.
“Thomas Vale?”
“My brother.”
Daniel came behind me.
Margaret looked at him.
“I received a call yesterday saying Linda Bennett had named her grandson Charles.”
“From whom?”
“I don't know.”
Of course.
I almost closed the door.
Then she said:
“I knew Charles Bennett.”
I let her inside.
Margaret had kept something for forty-six years.
A photograph.
Charles standing beside a young pregnant woman.
My mother.
On the back:
Whatever happens, the baby deserves better than Thomas.
My hands trembled.
“What happened to the baby?”
Margaret looked at me.
“I thought Linda knew.”
“Knew what?”
“That she didn't lose him.”
Him.
A boy.
Margaret explained that after Linda was hospitalized, Thomas's family arranged a private adoption.
Linda had been told the baby died.
Charles discovered the truth.
That was why he disappeared.
He had tried to find the child.
My mother had spent decades believing her brother abandoned her when, in reality, he had been searching for her son.
I thought about the blanket.
Charles.
Suddenly its meaning shifted.
But not enough to excuse what she'd done.
“Did Charles find the baby?”
Margaret nodded.
“I think so.”
“Who?”
“I don't know his adult name.”
“Why come here?”
“Because yesterday someone mailed me this.”
She placed an envelope on the table.
Inside was a baptism invitation.
Our invitation.
Except someone had written one sentence across the bottom:
THE BOY CHARLES SAVED WILL BE THERE.
Daniel and I stared at each other.
“Yesterday?” I asked.
Margaret nodded.
“The baptism guests.”
I grabbed the guest list.
Forty-two names.
Family.
Friends.
Neighbors.
One of them might have been the child my mother had been told was dead.
Then Margaret pointed at one name.
“That's him.”
My hand stopped.
She was pointing at someone I had known my entire life.
May you like
My father's closest friend.
Michael Reeves.
