My Sweet Annie

37

I pressed my fist to my chest, pushing my knuckles hard into my skin as I looked down at the letter unfolded on the table before me.

Anna had been pregnant. Pregnant with Royal's baby.

Had I suddenly descended into a soap opera? The thought came out of nowhere and startled a laugh out of me—one I swallowed back, ashamed, an instant later. I hadn't known her, but Anna Elvers had been a real person. A young one. Just a girl. She must have been terrified.

It wasn't clear what she'd done. Had she gone to stay with her aunt? Maybe the aunt had been a stepping stone to one of those secret homes for unwed mothers. Both seemed like viable options for a pregnant, single woman in the 1950s. I was no scholar of the history of single mothers' experiences in the United States, but I knew that the goal at that time would have been to hide the pregnancy from the community until the baby could be delivered and probably dealt with in a private adoption.

My uncle Royal had another child out there. His children Ellen and James had a half-sibling they didn't know about.

The notion deeply unsettled me. Scared me, even. I felt I had seen something I was not meant to see. The consequences began to unfurl in my mind.

Imagine if that child took an online DNA test and found their relatives.

Imagine if somebody else knew and if they, or even Gran, confronted Royal or his family about what had happened.

Imagine if I did. It was unthinkable. Unimaginable. It would destroy the life Royal had built up, the life of a pious, community- and family-focused man. I might not have known him well, but I knew he valued his family, his reputation, and his stability more than anything, especially at his advanced age.

The bathroom door opened, and Ana emerged, flush-faced, with a towel wrapped around her hair. She was wearing a bright, floral-patterned dress with spaghetti straps and a pair of yellow socks. She paused, looking at me, her brow wrinkling. "What's wrong?"

"I just found something out from Gran's diary."

"Judging from your expression, it's not good. I thought you had seen another freaky shadow."

I shook my head, pushing myself up. "Let me get you some coffee. Here." I turned Gran's diary around and slid it across the table to the seat across from me, and I folded Annie's letter and placed it next to the diary.

Ana glanced at the writings, then up at me. "Are you sure?"

I nodded. "Please. I need to talk to somebody about this, and it can't be my family. Not yet."

She moved toward the table, looking hesitant as she took her seat. I left her to read, heading into the kitchen to get her a cup of coffee. When I came back out a minute later, Ana was reading the letter, holding it delicately in her fingertips.

I put her coffee in front of her and resumed my seat, watching her read. When she'd finished, she put the letter down and looked up at me. "Wow."

"Right? I can't remember if I told you, but I actually saw Royal at his apartment on Tuesday—yesterday, I mean. Time is a blur. When I mentioned that I'd found Gran's diary, it was the only thing he said he wanted from the house."

"No wonder," Ana murmured. "This is kind of a bombshell."

"He's got a kid out there somewhere."

"Maybe. She might have had it and had it adopted out. Or maybe she had an abortion. They were a thing back then, just not...not very safe."

"Maybe..." I hadn't considered that possibility. I picked up the letter again and scanned it as Ana sipped her coffee. "She talks about being a mother, though, and starting a family. It doesn't seem like she wanted to get rid of the baby."

"Sometimes women didn't have a choice," Ana said. "Especially if Royal was trying to protect his reputation, he might have coerced her into it."

I nodded. "But Gran said that Anna disappeared."

We sat in silence, Ana looking at the diary entry, me at the letter. I felt sick. I didn't want to say what had occurred to me as a possibility, but I didn't have to.

"Maybe she died." Ana settled back into her chair, cradling her cup in her hands. "You know what it was like for women before Roe, Tabitha. It wasn't like she would have gone to a clinic for an abortion. It might've been some rando with no medical knowledge whatsoever. She might've even tried to do it herself."

I hadn't even known this woman. Hadn't even known of her until reading Gran's diary days before. Still, the notion that she could have died in such an awful way hit me in the stomach like a fist. I pictured twisted coat hangers, and a phantom pain twinged in my belly. "Jesus, Ana..."

"Or maybe she went to her auntie's house and had the baby there. If we're optimistic, it could have been at the hospital. She would have been pretty young, right?"

"Right. I don't know how old she was, but Gran did mention in an earlier diary entry that she was older than Gran was. At a guess, fifteen to seventeen?"

"Pretty young to be having a secret baby. Something could have happened to her during the birth." She gave me a sad half-smile. "Or, maybe she did have the baby and just ran away."

"Gran said they were best friends. It's just so crazy that she would have run away and never tried to contact Gran again. It would be different if Gran had moved around, or something, but she lived in the same town, the same house all her life. Almost all her life. She moved out for a hot second when she got married, but even then, Grandma Helen was still living here. Anna would have been able to find Gran so easily."

"I wonder what she was thinking when she wrote she was paranoid." Ana looked back down at Gran's diary, her gaze skimming the lines of the page.

"I'm sure she tells us more in the next entries."

"You have to tell me when you find out."

"I don't think I want to read it."

"Tabitha, come on." Ana raised her eyebrows at me. "You have to."

"I know. I'll just wait until you're back to read it with me, though."

"Seriously?"

"I don't want to know all of this by myself!" I laughed, although there wasn't much humor in it.

She shook her head, her eyes wide. "Woah. You have more willpower than anybody I know."

"The only thing that's pushing me to read faster is Uncle Royal, and he can wait. Especially now that I know why he wants these diaries so badly."

"Are you going to tell anybody?"

"No way. Of course not. I don't know what good it would do. It would just cause stress and drama. He's in his mid-eighties. His wife has dementia. His children are grown with their own lives."

"These sorts of things have a way of coming out eventually."

"Maybe—but if it does come out, it'll be because his secret kid takes a DNA test and looks people up. Then, at least it's not me shattering everybody's peaceful lives."