I had thanked her through tears.
She had smiled and told me that any decent person would have done the same.
We exchanged names, but life moved quickly. A few months later, I sent a thank-you card to the address she had given me. It was returned because she had moved.
I had wondered about her occasionally over the years.
Now I stared at the photograph in Susan’s hands.
“Where did you get this?”
She wiped her face.
“I found it among my mother’s belongings after she died. She had kept it because she always said helping you was one of the best things she’d ever done.”
I looked at her again.
“Your mother?”
Susan nodded.
“The woman in the photograph is me. I was twenty-two when I helped you. I had no idea we would ever meet again.”
My knees weakened.
The woman who had helped me during one of the most frightening moments of my life was the same woman who had spent the last three weeks celebrating the destruction of my marriage.
