I looked from Gregory to the photograph and back again, waiting for him to correct himself. He did not. The woman in the picture had one arm around the shoulders of a much younger Gregory. Behind them stood a clapboard house I had never seen. Her smile looked tired but genuine, and the sapphire pendant rested exactly where mine would have rested against my collarbone.<\/p>\n
\u201cYour mother,\u201d I repeated.<\/p>\n
\u201cYes.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cYou told me she died when you were a child.\u201d<\/p>\n
Gregory\u2019s face tightened. \u201cThat\u2019s what I was told.\u201d<\/p>\n
The answer unsettled me more than a simple confession would have.<\/p>\n
\u201cBy whom?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cMy father.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cYour father who died before we met?\u201d<\/p>\n
He nodded.<\/p>\n
I lowered the photograph.<\/p>\n
\u201cStart over.\u201d<\/p>\n
Gregory glanced at the bedroom door.<\/p>\n
\u201cToby\u2014\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIs downstairs.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cHe might come up.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThen lock the door.\u201d<\/p>\n
He did.<\/p>\n
For years, Gregory had spoken about his childhood sparingly. I knew his father had raised him mostly alone. I knew there had been relatives he stopped seeing as he grew older. I knew his mother had supposedly died after a long illness when Gregory was young enough that some memories of her had become indistinct.<\/p>\n
What I had never seen were photographs.<\/p>\n
Whenever I asked, Gregory said most family possessions had been lost during moves after his father\u2019s death. I had accepted that because there had been no reason not to.<\/p>\n
Now an entire box of them sat between us.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhere did these come from?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cLila.\u201d<\/p>\n
I turned sharply. \u201cShe gave them to you?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cSome.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cSome?\u201d<\/p>\n
Gregory selected several pictures and separated them from the others.<\/p>\n
\u201cThese appeared in my office mailbox.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cAbout four months ago.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cBefore you caught her in the house.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cYes.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd you still said nothing.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI didn\u2019t know what they meant.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThey are photographs of your supposedly dead mother.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI knew that.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThen they meant something.\u201d<\/p>\n
Gregory rubbed the bridge of his nose.<\/p>\n
\u201cI thought someone was trying to manipulate me.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWhy?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cBecause the first envelope contained no note. Just three pictures.\u201d<\/p>\n
He handed them to me.<\/p>\n
In one, his mother stood beside a car. In another, she sat at a picnic table beside two girls. The third showed Gregory himself, perhaps six years old, asleep with his head against her shoulder.<\/p>\n
I studied the two girls.<\/p>\n
\u201cWho are they?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI didn\u2019t know.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cOne looks older.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cYes.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cAre they relatives?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s what I\u2019ve been trying to determine.\u201d<\/p>\n
The older girl appeared perhaps fourteen or fifteen. The younger one might have been eight. Gregory\u2019s mother stood behind them with her hands resting on their shoulders.<\/p>\n
Something about the older girl bothered me.<\/p>\n
I lifted the photograph closer.<\/p>\n
She was wearing the sapphire pendant.<\/p>\n
\u201cGregory.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI see it.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cNo. Look.\u201d<\/p>\n
He moved beside me.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe necklace is on the girl.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI know.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cYou said it belonged to your mother.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThat was what my father told me.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cYour father told you about it?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cOnce.\u201d<\/p>\n
A memory seemed to pull his attention away from the room.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was around nine. I found an empty jewelry case in one of his drawers. He became furious when he caught me touching it. Later he apologized and said it had belonged to my mother.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThe necklace?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cYes.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cBut you never saw the original?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cNo.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThen why duplicate it for our anniversary?\u201d<\/p>\n
His silence answered before he did.<\/p>\n
\u201cBecause of her.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cYour mother.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cYes.\u201d<\/p>\n
I set the photograph down carefully.<\/p>\n
Gregory looked embarrassed in a way I had rarely seen.<\/p>\n
\u201cI wanted to give you something connected to the part of my family I remembered as good.\u201d<\/p>\n
Despite everything, that hurt differently.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou told me you invented the design.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI should have told you the truth.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWhy didn\u2019t you?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cBecause I knew how strange it sounded. Giving my wife a copy of jewelry connected to my dead mother.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cExcept apparently she might not have been dead.\u201d<\/p>\n
He looked down.<\/p>\n
\u201cNo.\u201d<\/p>\n
I studied another photograph.<\/p>\n
\u201cDid Lila tell you that?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cNot directly.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThen what did she tell you?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThe first real conversation happened when I caught her here.\u201d<\/p>\n
Gregory leaned forward, elbows on his knees.<\/p>\n
\u201cShe kept asking about these photographs. Specifically whether we had any more.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWhy would she think we did?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cShe said someone told her we might.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWho?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cShe refused to say.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cEverything with this woman seems to end with refusal.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI noticed.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cYet you kept meeting her.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI wanted answers.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cAt the expense of telling your wife there might be an intruder connected to her family.\u201d<\/p>\n
His expression hardened slightly. \u201cI was trying to understand whether you were in danger.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd your method was to conceal the danger.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI made the wrong choice.\u201d<\/p>\n
It was the closest he had come to saying it plainly.<\/p>\n
\u201cYes,\u201d I said. \u201cYou did.\u201d<\/p>\n
We sat with that.<\/p>\n
Outside, a car passed along the street. The sound faded.<\/p>\n
I returned to the picture of the two girls.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhy did you say you think she\u2019s interested in me?\u201d<\/p>\n
Gregory did not respond immediately.<\/p>\n
I looked up.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou said she asked whether I was really your wife. She asked about my mother. She asked where I worked.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cYes.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cSo explain why.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cShe has photographs of you.\u201d<\/p>\n
My body went cold.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat?\u201d<\/p>\n
He reached deeper into the box and removed a large envelope.<\/p>\n
I did not take it.<\/p>\n
\u201cPhotographs of me from when?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cDifferent times.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cGregory.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cLook.\u201d<\/p>\n
I pulled the contents free.<\/p>\n
The first image showed me outside my high school.<\/p>\n
I recognized the building immediately.<\/p>\n
I was seventeen.<\/p>\n
The next showed my mother and me leaving a restaurant.<\/p>\n
Another had been taken during my first year of nursing school.<\/p>\n
Then came one from years later: Gregory and me walking across a parking lot when Toby was still an infant.<\/p>\n
I could hear my pulse.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhere did you get these?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cLila.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThese aren\u2019t family photographs.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cNo.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cSomeone took them.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cYes.\u201d<\/p>\n
Some were clearly candid shots captured from a distance.<\/p>\n
I turned them over.<\/p>\n
Several had dates written on the backs.<\/p>\n
The oldest photograph predated my relationship with Gregory by years.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis has nothing to do with you,\u201d I whispered.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s what I eventually realized.\u201d<\/p>\n
A sensation like vertigo passed through me.<\/p>\n
\u201cSomeone was watching me before I knew you.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cYes.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWho?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t know.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cLila?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cShe would have been a child when some of these were taken.\u201d<\/p>\n
I calculated quickly.<\/p>\n
He was right.<\/p>\n
I stared at the photograph of my seventeen-year-old self.<\/p>\n
\u201cDid she say where she got them?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cShe said they belonged to someone in her family.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWho?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cShe wouldn\u2019t tell me.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWhy?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cBecause she was afraid.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cOf what?\u201d<\/p>\n
Gregory\u2019s eyes moved toward the windows.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think of whom.\u201d<\/p>\n
A sound downstairs made me stand abruptly.<\/p>\n
\u201cToby.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cHe\u2019s fine.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cYou don\u2019t know that.\u201d<\/p>\n
I crossed the room and opened the door.<\/p>\n
The television was still playing. Toby was singing to himself.<\/p>\n
I closed the door again but did not lock it this time.<\/p>\n
\u201cContinue.\u201d<\/p>\n
Gregory reached into the box.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere was one more thing.\u201d<\/p>\n
He produced an old envelope, yellowed slightly with age.<\/p>\n
The handwriting on the front made me sit down.<\/p>\n
It belonged to my mother.<\/p>\n
I had seen that looping capital C thousands of times on birthday cards, grocery notes, school forms and letters.<\/p>\n
Written across the envelope was my first name.<\/p>\n
Claire.<\/p>\n
My fingers shook.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhere did this come from?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cLila had it.\u201d<\/p>\n
I stared at him.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou said my mother\u2019s letter disappeared.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cNot that letter.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThen what is this?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t know.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cHave you opened it?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cNo.\u201d<\/p>\n
I looked at him, genuinely surprised.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhy?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cBecause your name is on it.\u201d<\/p>\n
After months of terrible decisions, he had apparently discovered one boundary.<\/p>\n
I slid a finger beneath the flap.<\/p>\n
The adhesive had long ago loosened.<\/p>\n
Inside was a single folded page.<\/p>\n
The letter began normally.<\/p>\n
My mother addressed me as sweetheart.<\/p>\n
Then the words changed everything I understood about the photographs.<\/p>\n
She wrote that if I ever found the letter, it meant something she had tried to keep buried had returned.<\/p>\n
She apologized for allowing fear to make decisions for both of us.<\/p>\n
She referred to another woman without giving a name.<\/p>\n
Someone who had helped her years earlier.<\/p>\n
Someone who had lost a child.<\/p>\n
Someone connected to \u201cthe Hartwell family.\u201d<\/p>\n
I stopped reading.<\/p>\n
\u201cHartwell?\u201d<\/p>\n
Gregory\u2019s expression changed.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat?\u201d<\/p>\n
I repeated it.<\/p>\n
\u201cHartwell.\u201d<\/p>\n
He took one photograph from the bed and turned it over.<\/p>\n
Written in faded ink beneath the date were two words.<\/p>\n
Hartwell House.<\/p>\n
I stared at them.<\/p>\n
\u201cYour family?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t know.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWas that your mother\u2019s last name?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cNo. At least not the one I knew.\u201d<\/p>\n
I continued reading.<\/p>\n
My mother\u2019s letter became increasingly cautious. She did not describe exactly what happened, but she wrote that records had been altered, promises had been made, and one person had been \u201csent away under a name that was never hers.\u201d<\/p>\n
The final lines were worse.<\/p>\n
She told me that if someone ever approached me wearing Evelyn\u2019s sapphire, I should listen before calling the police.<\/p>\n
I stopped.<\/p>\n
Neither Gregory nor I spoke.<\/p>\n
I read the sentence again.<\/p>\n
\u201cEvelyn.\u201d<\/p>\n
Gregory had gone pale.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat was my mother\u2019s name.\u201d<\/p>\n
The letter trembled in my hand.<\/p>\n
My mother knew Gregory\u2019s mother.<\/p>\n
Not casually.<\/p>\n
Not through us.<\/p>\n
Years before Gregory and I met.<\/p>\n
I felt as if the history of my life had split open beneath me.<\/p>\n
\u201cHow?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t know.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cYou told me our families had never met.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s what I believed.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cYour mother\u2019s necklace. My mother\u2019s letter. Photographs of me.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI know.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cNo, Gregory. I don\u2019t think you do.\u201d<\/p>\n
I stood, pacing because sitting had become impossible.<\/p>\n
\u201cOur marriage suddenly looks like part of something that started before either of us knew it existed.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve wondered the same thing.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cSince when?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cSince Lila showed me that letter.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd you kept sleeping beside me every night without mentioning it.\u201d<\/p>\n
His face tightened.<\/p>\n
\u201cYes.\u201d<\/p>\n
I wanted to scream at him.<\/p>\n
Instead I lowered my voice because Toby was downstairs.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhy?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI was afraid that once I told you, we couldn\u2019t return to normal.\u201d<\/p>\n
I stared at him.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe were already not normal. I just wasn\u2019t informed.\u201d<\/p>\n
He had no answer.<\/p>\n
I picked up the photograph showing Gregory\u2019s mother with the two girls.<\/p>\n
The older girl wore the sapphire.<\/p>\n
I compared her features with the young woman I had seen at the bakery.<\/p>\n
There was resemblance.<\/p>\n
Not enough to say they were the same person, obviously. The picture was decades old.<\/p>\n
But the shape of the eyes.<\/p>\n
The line of the jaw.<\/p>\n
\u201cWho is this older girl?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t know.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cCould she be Lila\u2019s mother?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s one possibility.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd the younger one?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t know.\u201d<\/p>\n
My eyes remained on her.<\/p>\n
Something about that child\u2019s face pulled at me.<\/p>\n
Not recognition exactly.<\/p>\n
A sensation beneath recognition.<\/p>\n
I brought the photograph closer.<\/p>\n
Her hair was lighter than the older girl\u2019s. Her smile was uncertain. One hand gripped the hem of her dress.<\/p>\n
I had seen that posture before.<\/p>\n
In childhood photographs.<\/p>\n
My own.<\/p>\n
I turned to Gregory.<\/p>\n
He was already watching me.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou see it too.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI didn\u2019t want to say.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cSay what?\u201d<\/p>\n
He took another photograph from the envelope of images showing my childhood and placed it beside the old family picture.<\/p>\n
The similarities were not subtle once they were side by side.<\/p>\n
The younger girl had my mother\u2019s eyes.<\/p>\n
Or perhaps mine.<\/p>\n
I felt nauseated.<\/p>\n
\u201cHow old is this photograph?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThe date says thirty-one years ago.\u201d<\/p>\n
I calculated.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s before I was born.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cYes.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThen who is she?\u201d<\/p>\n
Gregory\u2019s phone buzzed.<\/p>\n
Both of us jumped.<\/p>\n
He pulled it from his pocket.<\/p>\n
Unknown number.<\/p>\n
A message appeared.<\/p>\n
I watched his expression change.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat does it say?\u201d<\/p>\n
He turned the screen toward me.<\/p>\n
It contained only one sentence.<\/p>\n
DON\u2019T LET CLAIRE OPEN THE DOOR.<\/p>\n
For one second neither of us moved.<\/p>\n
Then the doorbell rang downstairs.<\/p>\n
Once.<\/p>\n
A pause.<\/p>\n
Then again.<\/p>\n
Toby shouted from the living room.<\/p>\n
\u201cMommy! Someone\u2019s here!\u201d<\/p>\n
Gregory was already moving.<\/p>\n
I followed.<\/p>\n
Before we reached the stairs, Toby called again.<\/p>\n
This time his words stopped us both.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s the lady from the bakery!\u201d<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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