The smell of fresh bread drifting from a kitchen.
A brown rabbit tucked beneath my arm.
And an older woman standing on a veranda, calling out:
“Emmy! Come inside before you catch a chill!”
I gasped.
The image vanished almost immediately, leaving me trembling.
“I remember the garden,” I whispered. “I remember the roses.”
Margaret pressed my hand against her cheek.
“Yes, sweetheart. You used to hide behind the rose bushes.”
I began to cry.
“I thought I had imagined those memories.”
“No,” she whispered. “You were here. You were loved here.”
Richard stood behind us, wiping his eyes with a handkerchief.
For the first time since I had entered the mansion, I understood why he had looked at me with such unbearable sadness.
He wasn’t seeing a stranger.
He was looking at the child he had spent most of his life trying to find.
Eventually, I managed to sit beside Margaret’s wheelchair.
