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She hadn’t wanted to take the identification from the Feldmans’
files, hadn’t even considered the possibility until Gladys had
pulled out the file to show her Katie’s graduation photo. She’d
seen the birth certificate and the social security card next to the
photo and recognized the opportunity they presented. The next
time she’d gone to the house, she’d excused herself to go to the
bathroom and had gone to the file cabinet instead. Later, as she ate
blueberry pie with them in the kitchen, the documents felt like
they were burning in her pockets. A week later, after making a
copy of the birth certificate at the library and folding and
wrinkling it to make it appear dated, she put the document in the
file. She would have done the same with the social security card,
but she couldn’t make a good enough copy and she hoped that if
they noticed it was missing, they would believe it had been lost or
misplaced.
She reminded herself that Kevin would never know what she’d
done. He didn’t like the Feldmans and the feeling was mutual. She
suspected that they knew he beat her. She could see it in their eyes
as they watched her dart across the road to visit them, in the way
they pretended never to notice the bruises on her arms, in the way
their faces tightened whenever she mentioned Kevin. She wanted
to think that they would have been okay with what she’d done,
that they would have wanted her to take the identification,
because they knew she needed it and wanted her to escape.
They were the only people she missed from Dorchester and she
wondered how Larry was doing. They were her friends when she
had no one else, and she wanted to tell Larry that she was sorry
for his loss. She wanted to cry with him and talk about Gladys and
to tell him that because of them, her life was better now. She
wanted to tell him that she’d met a man who loved her, that she
was happy for the first time in years.
But she would do none of those things. Instead, she simply
stepped out onto the porch and, through eyes that were blurry
with tears, watched the storm tear leaves from the trees.