Then Helen picked up my photograph.
“After Amani was born, you sent my mother this.”
“With a letter,” Mom said immediately.
Helen looked at her.
“A letter?”
“Four pages.”
Helen’s face changed.
“There wasn’t a letter.”
Mom stared at her.
“I wrote that I wanted Anna to come home. I told her she had a little sister. I told her her room was still hers.”
Helen looked down at the photograph. “Mom only got this.”
“Robert had moved by then,” Helen said. “The letter had to be forwarded to their new address. Mom said when it finally arrived, the envelope was torn open and sealed inside a plastic postal bag.”
She touched the photograph.
“By the time Mom got it, this was the only thing still inside.”
Anna saw Margaret smiling with a newborn in her arms and thought she finally had proof.
Margaret had the daughter she really wanted.
