PART 3
The photograph slipped from the envelope and landed faceup on the kitchen table.
For several seconds, I couldn’t breathe.
It showed my mother.
Not a woman who looked like her.
Not someone with the same dark hair or the same narrow smile.
My mother.
She was sitting beside a lake beneath a blazing summer sky, wearing the yellow cardigan I remembered from childhood. Her hair was shorter than it had been before she died, and she looked thinner, but there was no mistaking her.
On the back, written in blue ink, were four words:
August 17 — Seven months later.
Seven months after her funeral.
My chair scraped violently against the floor.
“What is this?”
Frank didn’t answer.
I turned toward him.
“What the hell is this?”
His weathered face tightened.
“Keep reading.”
I grabbed the second envelope. Inside was a letter written in the looping handwriting I had seen on old birthday cards stored in the attic.
