Three days.
Mark had told me she’d lived seventeen minutes.
I looked at the document again.
“No.”
Miriam moved her chair closer.
“Emily.”
“This is wrong.”
“It may be incomplete.
We need to verify it against the official records.”
I shook my head.
“Mark said she died.”
“I know.”
“He held her.”
“I know.”
“He told me she died in his arms.”
Miriam’s voice became very quiet.
“We have not found a death registration matching the information he gave you.”
The room tilted.
For twenty-eight years, I’d imagined a tiny grave that didn’t exist.
I’d whispered birthday wishes to a child I believed had never learned to smile.
I’d mourned seventeen minutes of life.
And now there was a piece of paper suggesting that my daughter had survived.
I pressed both hands against my mouth.
What if she hadn’t died?
The thought was too enormous to hold.
