envelope.
“They gave this to me before they let me leave work. They told me to give it to you if Jonah came.”
My fingers trembled as I opened it.
Inside was a photograph of my mother holding a baby.
On the back, someone had written a date and a name.
The date was six months before I was born.
The name was Jonah.
I stared at the photograph, unable to understand what I was seeing.
Jonah took it from me.
For the first time in all the years I
had known him, I watched him become genuinely afraid.
“No,” he whispered.
I looked at him.
“Jonah, what does this mean?”
He stared at the baby in my mother’s arms.
Then he looked at me.
“My father told me I had a sister.”
My heart stopped.
“He said she died before I was born.”
Jonah’s voice broke.
“But if this photograph is real…”
He couldn’t finish the sentence.
I looked again at my mother’s face.
She was smiling at the baby as though he were the most precious thing in
