Diane opened the door.
She took one look at my face — at the face, I understood later, that was her own niece’s face grown up — and she began to shake.
“She told me you were gone,” Diane whispered. “Eric told me you didn’t want them. Oh my God. Oh my God, what did he do.”
And then, behind her, in the hallway, a girl appeared.
Thirteen years old.
Tall now.
With my mother’s eyes and her brother’s exact crooked smile.
She looked at me the way you look at something from a dream you’ve had your whole life and never understood.
“Janice,” I said.
And my daughter, who had been told for eight years that her mother had thrown her away, said the first thing she said to me.
“Is it true? Did you look for me?”
“Every day,” I said. “Every single day of my life. I just didn’t know there was anywhere to look.”
