The Family Trade Read Online Free PDF Page A

must have looked baffled because Iris smiled at her encouragingly. “Yes. You know, ‘stuff.’ Photograph albums, useless things like Morris’s folks’ birth certificates, my old passport, my parents’ death certificates, your adoption papers. Some stuff relating to your birth-mother, too.”
    Miriam shook her head. “My adoption papers—why would I want them? That’s old stuff, and you’re the only mother I’ve ever had.” She looked at Iris fiercely. “You’re not allowed to push me away!”
    “Well! And who said I was? I just figured you wouldn’t want to lose the opportunity. If you ever felt like trying to trace your roots. It belongs to you, and I think now is definitely past time for you to have it. I kept the newspaper pages too, you know. It caused quite a stir.” Miriam made a face. “I know you’re not interested,” Iris said placatingly. “Humour me. There’s a box.”
    “A box.”
    “A pink and green shoebox. Sitting on the second shelf of your father’s bureau in the guest bedroom upstairs. Do me a favour and fetch it down, will you?”
    “Just for you.”
    Miriam found the box easily enough. It rattled when she picked it up and carried it, smelling of mothballs, down to the living room. Iris had picked up her crochet again and was pulling knots with an expression of fierce concentration. “Dr. Hare told me to work on it,” she said without looking up. “It helps preserve hand-eye coordination.”
    “I see.” Miriam put the box down on the sofa. “What’s this one?”
    “A Klein-bottle cosy.” Iris looked up defensively at Miriam’s snort. “You should laugh! In this crazy inside-out world, we must take our comforts from crazy inside-out places.”
    “You and Dad.” Miriam waved it off. “Both crazy inside-out sorts of people.”
    “ Bleeding hearts, you mean,” Iris echoed ominously. “People who refuse to bottle it all up, who live life on the outside, who—” she glanced around—“end up growing old disgracefully.” She sniffed. “Stop me before I reminisce again. Open the box!”
    Miriam obeyed. It was half-full of yellowing, carefully folded newsprint and elderly photocopies of newspaper stories. Then there was a paper bag and some certificates and pieces of formal paperwork made up the rest of its contents. “The bag contained stuff that was found with your birth-mother by the police,” Iris explained. “Personal effects. They had to keep the clothing as evidence, but nobody ever came forward and after a while they passed the effects on to Morris for safekeeping. There’s a locket of your mother’s in there—I think you ought to keep it in a safe place for now; I think it’s probably quite valuable. The papers—it was a terrible thing. Terrible.”
    Miriam unfolded the uppermost sheet; it crackled slightly with age as she read it. UNKNOWN WOMAN FOUND STABBED, BABY TAKEN INTO CUSTODY. It gave her a most peculiar feeling. She’d known about it for many years, of course, but this was like seeing it for the first time in a history book, written down in black and white. “They still don’t know who she was?” Miriam asked.
    “Why should they?” Iris looked at her oddly. “Sometimes they can reopen the case when new evidence comes to light, or do DNA testing, but after thirty-two years most of the witnesses will have moved away or died. The police officers who first looked into it will have retired. Probably nothing happens unless a new lead comes up. Say, they find another body or someone confesses years later. It’s just one of those terrible things that sometimes happen to people. The only unusual thing about it was you.” She looked at Miriam fondly.
    “Why they let two radicals, one of them a resident alien and both of them into antiwar protests and stuff like that, adopt a baby—” Miriam shook her head. Then she grinned. “Did they think I would slow you down or something?”
    “Possibly, possibly. But I don’t remember being asked any