She looked at me.
“I thought you’d think I wished you’d been her.”
“Did you?”
“No.”
The answer came so quickly it almost hurt.
Mom grabbed my hand. “I loved Anna. Then I had you. One didn’t erase the other.”
Her eyes moved to the photograph.
“I spent years telling myself maybe it was better not to talk about her. I never wanted my daughter growing up thinking she was someone’s replacement. And once you’d grown up, the longer I’d kept quiet, the harder it became to explain why.”
I looked down at the photograph again, at Anna’s words beneath my name.
“So all those years, Anna thought I was the reason she lost you.”
“When she was 12,” Helen said.
I looked at her.
“What about later?”
Helen smiled through her tears. “Later was different.”
She reached into the bottom of the box. A small bundle was tied with string.
