“She asked us not to tell you.”
“Who?”
“Your sister.”
The word sounded unreal.
“My sister asked you to pretend she didn’t exist?”
“No. She asked for time.”
“How much time?”
Dad looked at me.
“Apparently more than your mother had.”
That silenced me.
Mom had died suddenly.
A stroke at seventy-three.
She had gone to bed complaining of a headache and never woke.
There had been no goodbye.
No last confession.
No unlocking of old rooms.
Dad reached into the metal box and removed a photograph.
It showed Mom standing beside another woman outside a café.
The woman looked perhaps forty-five.
Dark hair.
Tall.
And unmistakably related to me.
Not because she resembled Mom.
Because she resembled me.
My eyes.
My mouth.
Even the strange way one eyebrow lifted slightly higher than the other.
On the back, Mom had written:
June 14.
Found her.
Her name is Rebecca.
I sat down.
