I felt something twist painfully inside my chest.
“Did she know my name?”
“She knew the name given to you at birth. She knew the hospital where you were born. But the records available to her were incomplete.”
“Then how did she find me now?”
Robert closed the folder.
“Margaret received a letter from her several months ago.”
I looked at him.
“A letter?”
“Yes. Sarah had finally located an old record that connected Margaret to the hospital. She wrote to her, explaining who she was and asking whether she might be allowed to meet you.”
I could barely breathe.
“What did my mother say?”
Robert looked toward the doorway.
“That’s something you should hear from Margaret herself.”
The Door Opened
A sound came from the corridor.
Footsteps.
I turned.
A woman stood in the doorway, holding the arm of my mother.
She was perhaps fifty years old, with dark hair streaked with gray and a thin face that showed the passage of difficult years. She wore a simple blue cardigan and clutched a handkerchief in one trembling hand.
