His face had gone gray.
“Emily,” he said carefully, “don’t touch that dish.”
The baby moved beneath my hand as a cold certainty settled over me.
“What happened at Fort Sheridan?”
Dad opened his mouth, but before he could answer, his phone buzzed.
A message appeared from an unknown number.
It contained a photograph.
My mother, alive, standing beside Linda Carter twenty-eight years ago.
PART 3 – END
For a moment, the world went quiet enough for Emily to hear the maple leaves scraping against the porch.
Her father stood beside her, one hand wrapped around his phone, the other slightly raised as if he meant to shield her from the picture on the screen. But there was no shielding her from it now.
The photograph was old, faded at the edges, its colors softened by time. Her mother stood in front of a brick building, young and bright-eyed, her dark hair pulled over one shoulder. Beside her stood Linda Carter, not yet the polished woman who had appeared on the porch with pearls and a casserole dish, but unmistakably her—same narrow mouth, same lifted chin, same careful smile.
