I bent to pick it up, but Mom didn’t move.
“What did you say?”
Helen’s eyes filled.
“Anna.”
Mom grabbed the edge of the counter.
I had never heard that name before.
Helen reached across the register.
“Margaret, my mother spent most of her life wondering what happened to you.”
“She found a photograph of you years ago. Older than the ones she had as a girl. She kept it beside this box.”
Helen shook her head. “I knew your face before I knew you.”
Mom made a sound I had never heard from her before.
Not quite a sob.
Not quite a word.
Then she whispered, “Anna had a daughter?”
Helen nodded.
“I’m her daughter.”
I stared at Mom.
“Who is Anna?”
Mom looked at me as though she’d forgotten I was standing there.
Her lips trembled.
“A little girl I loved.”
Helen opened the box.
The first thing she removed was a photograph.
The edges were curled.
A young woman stood outside a small white house holding the hand of a girl with dark braids.
The woman was my mother.
She couldn’t have been more than 25.
