At least, that was the story.
My father had told it.
My grandparents had told it.
My aunt Margaret had told it.
And now a dead man’s handwriting was telling me something completely different.
Claire was your sister.
I looked at the photograph again.
Twenty-seven years earlier, I had been five.
Old enough, surely, to remember an adult sister.
Unless Claire hadn’t lived with us.
Unless “sister” meant half sister.
Unless my father was lying even in the confession he’d left behind.
By dawn, I had constructed twenty explanations and believed none of them.
At six thirty, Lily wandered into the living room in dinosaur pajamas.
She stopped when she saw me.
“Mommy?”
I quickly slid the photograph beneath a folder.
“Good morning.”
“Why are you on the floor?”
“I was looking through Grandpa’s old things.”
She considered this.
“Did you find treasure?”
I looked at the hidden photograph.
“Maybe.”
