She reached into the bottom of the box. There was a small bundle tied with string.
Inside were photographs, old addresses, scraps of paper and notes.
Anna had started looking for Margaret again years later.
Not continuously.
In bursts.
An old address in one notebook.
A possible married surname in another.
A clipped photograph she’d found somewhere years later.
A letter returned from a house Mom had already left.
Then Helen pulled out a folded piece of paper.
“Mom wrote this after she got sick.”
Mom couldn’t take it.
So Helen read.
Only a few lines.
Anna wrote that she no longer blamed Margaret.
She wrote that when she became a mother herself, she finally understood how someone could love a child and still get something terribly wrong.
Then Helen stopped.
“There’s one part you should hear from me.”
Mom looked at Helen who then nodded toward me.
“Mom never forgot Amani. Not even after all those years.”
I blinked.
“From the photograph?”
“Yes.”
Helen smiled.
“She called you her little sister.”
I couldn’t speak. I’d gone my whole life not knowing someone out there had thought of me as her little sister.
The photograph in my hand changed again.
