“You are somebody beautiful and sweet and lovely. We all love you, no matter who your Mother and Father were.”
“I know they were fine, too, Mimi. But it’s this awful suspense of not knowing. I might have brothers and sisters and pass right by them any day and not know them. My mother must be tortured imagining horrible things have happened to me. I’d—I’d rather—believe—she is dead than that she has worried about me all these years.”
The letter which Mimi had quickly thrust in her belt when she took Chloe in her arms, crackled as the two girls sat down on the bed. Both the chairs and the vanity stool were piled up. Everything was topsy-turvy in term-end confusion.
Mimi was more upset than anything around her. The letter had brought her a spark of hope, so dim, so faint she dared not tell. Yet Chloe needed to know so badly; which would be worse, to give her a ray of hope that in all probability would be shattered or leave her as she was without anything to cling to? If she should tell Chloe she had told Daddy, Chloe might not like it. She might not feel as Mimi did, that any great secret could be shared with your parents without breaking your promise. Mimi could keep secrets. She had struggled hard and won to keep from telling Millie. She had never told Betsy about Madge and the alarm bell. But Chloe was again sobbing softly against her. She trembled delicately as Pluto, the crow, had trembled in Mimi’s hands while Daddy patched his broken wing. Poor Chloe! A wounded dark bird snatched from her nest before she could fly.
“Would you know Fritzie if you saw him or saw a picture of him, Chloe?”
She needed a more tangible clue. Something she could tell Daddy definitely yes and no about.
“I’ve often wondered. You see, it’s been so very long ago. I was so tiny. I remember how I laughed at the pictures tattooed on his arms—a lady on one and a sailor on the other. He’d hold them together and we’d play they were dancing. He cackled instead of laughing. When I think back the only picture I have is that blurred one of my mother—hear her frantic screams. Voices—I’d KNOW HIS VOICE, Mimi. I know I would.”
Encouraged by her decision Chloe continued.
“When I get in college, I’m going to take psychology. I read it in the library every chance I get now. When I am old enough to travel by myself I’m going everywhere hunting places and faces that seem familiar. Oh, Mimi, I’ve thought about it so much! Maybe, some day, when I’m sure Fritzie and the short man and big old Freida are dead and can’t hurt us any more, I may write my story and have my picture made and published.”
“When Fritzie is dead.” Mimi repeated slowly. The words in Daddy’s letter danced before her eyes. Should she tell? Daddy had written at great length about Chloe’s story.