Part 2: A Place to Begin

I gave my speech without mentioning Nora, Theo, or Mae. I thanked the teachers who had worked with the children and the volunteers who kept the art program open on weekends. When I stepped down, I saw Mae pointing at a paper bird hanging from the ceiling. Theo was explaining something to her with his hands.

I did not approach them again that night. Nora had asked for a good evening, and I understood that meant allowing them to enjoy their own work without making them manage my shock.

The next morning I called my attorney, Elena, and asked how to establish parentage and discuss a plan respectfully. She advised me not to treat a resemblance as proof or assume I knew what Nora had experienced. She also suggested that we preserve any relevant records without asking staff to search Nora's private life.

Nora's attorney contacted Elena two days later. Nora was willing to meet with a mediator and discuss a confidential parentage test. She wanted a stable routine for the children and no publicity. I agreed.

While we waited for the meeting, I asked our office manager to locate the company's old mail archive. The search was limited to correspondence addressed to me during the months after Nora and I separated. I explained the purpose and asked that any unrelated personal material remain unopened.

Three days later, the manager found a scanned envelope addressed in Nora's handwriting. The physical letter had been sent to my father's office. The archive recorded it as received, but the copy contained only the outside of the envelope. A handwritten note in my father's calendar said, “Handled.”

I felt anger at him, then guilt for feeling relief. It would have been easy to blame one man and declare myself innocent. My father had controlled the mail, but I had also stopped asking questions. When Nora and I separated, I had accepted his claim that she wanted no further contact. I had not verified it because the answer suited the story I was telling myself: that our marriage had ended cleanly and there was nothing left to repair.

At the mediator's office Nora brought copies of two letters. The first said she was pregnant and wanted to discuss the future. The second asked me to contact her attorney. She had sent both to the business address I had used throughout our marriage.

“I called your office afterward,” she said. “Your father answered once. He told me you had read the letters and didn't want a child.”

“I never saw them.”

“I know that now. At the time, you had already left our home. I had every reason to believe him.”

The mediator asked what we needed next. Nora said the children knew they had a father named Julian, but they did not know the details of the letters. She wanted them to hear any explanation from both of us, in language appropriate for their age.

“I don't want them to feel responsible for fixing what adults did,” she said.

“Neither do I,” I replied.

We agreed to wait for the test result before discussing a schedule. I also agreed not to contact the children directly or post their artwork. They had been courteous to a stranger at the exhibition. That did not mean they had agreed to a new relationship overnight.

As the meeting ended, Nora handed me a small photograph of the tree drawing. “They asked me to show you this,” she said. “Mae says the empty branch isn't a question you have to answer immediately.”

I looked at the space beside the birds. “She is wiser than I was at her age.”

Nora gave me a tired smile. “She would probably say she just likes drawing birds.”