The cemetery had emptied.
The last set of headlights swept across the gate and disappeared.
I was alone in the gray afternoon with the envelope on my lap and my hands that would not stop trembling.
There were three documents inside beneath the photograph.
The first was a hospital record.
St.
Agatha's Medical Center.
The date was fifty-one years ago, almost to the month.
The mother's name was listed as Eleanor Ruth Marsh.
The father's line was blank.
Under *outcome of birth*, two words: *relinquished voluntarily*.
The second document was an adoption agency intake form.
The infant's assigned case number.
A receiving family's surname, partially redacted with a thick black line — but the city was still visible.
The city where I grew up.
I set both papers on the passenger seat and picked up the third.
It was a letter.
Handwritten on pale blue stationery, the kind you find in old desk drawers.
