Finding Arun Read Free Page B

from
breakfast.’
    ‘Okay. I’m sure there’ll be a few slices left over
if you change your mind later.’
    Aaron listened while Arthur’s heavy footsteps backed
away from the study door and made their way downstairs. When he
could no longer hear them, he breathed a deep sigh of relief and,
gingerly mopping his brow, turned his attention back to the chaos
that lay before him. The sheer number of letters was overwhelming,
perhaps ten or even twenty years of correspondence; a lifetime’s
worth. He reached for the nearest one and began to read
compulsively. Entirely engrossed, he consumed letter after letter,
pausing only to reflect on the things that he had read and what
they might mean. However, far from offering any explanation, each
reading only served to add to his confusion and to raise more
questions about his biological mother and the nature of her
relationship with the only mother that he had ever known.
    The Rutherfords had always maintained that Aaron’s
real mother had passed away shortly after his birth. Entrusted into
Catherine’s care during her residency in India, the dying woman had
quickly developed a strong bond with the young doctor and, with no
trustworthy next of kin, begged her to take care of Aaron once she
was gone. The childless Catherine had been so touched by the
woman’s plight and resolute faith in her parenting abilities that
she had felt compelled to accept. Now it seemed that not only was
this story fabricated, but that his birth mother was very much
alive, had regularly corresponded with Catherine over the years and
even had other children.
    With each letter that he read Aaron’s reality became
more and more twisted, until he was no longer certain of anything
that he had believed to be true about his life with the
Rutherfords. It was hard to take it all in at once, but something
inside was pushing him, daring him, to keep reading and he couldn’t
tear his eyes away from the page. He pressed on, desperate to fill
in the missing pieces of the puzzle, but the task was complicated
by the absence of Catherine’s responses to each letter, and by the
fact that his frenzied attack on the bookcase had disturbed any
chronological order that Kalpana’s letters might have been stored
in.
     
    Straining to read the last lines of the umpteenth
letter, Aaron became aware that he was sitting in near darkness. He
glanced up at the window, surprised to find that the sun had
already set and that the faint glow by which he had been reading
was cast entirely by the lights that adorned the garden below. He
had been locked away for hours and so absorbed in his quest for the
truth that time had slipped by almost imperceptibly. He felt
drained, physically, mentally and most of all emotionally. His head
was swimming with everything that he had read; yet for all his
efforts he was no closer to understanding the true circumstances
surrounding his adoption. He desperately wanted to put the letters
back where he had found them, to close the door to the study and to
crawl back in to bed and pretend that the day had never happened,
but he knew that there could be no simple return to the life that
he had always known.
    His thoughts were interrupted by the sound of a low
growl originating from deep within his belly, as he registered the
feeling of hunger for the first time in over a week. Breakfast felt
like an age ago and though he usually wished to avoid the
awkwardness of their one-on-one exchanges, he knew that a second
mealtime conversation with Arthur was now an unavoidable necessity.
Arthur was the only one who might be able to explain the truth
about what he had found and, despite the evidence to the contrary,
he still clung to the hope that there was a perfectly logical and
rational explanation as to why his parents had lied to him.
    Tucking a few of the letters into his tracksuit
bottom pocket, Aaron gently eased himself to a standing position
and surveyed the room once more. It was reminiscent of a