I frowned.
“Mrs. Alvarez?”
Her daughter reached into her handbag and removed a faded envelope.
My name was written across the front in my mother’s handwriting.
I stopped breathing for a second.
Dad saw it too.
“That’s Helen’s writing,” he whispered.
Mrs. Alvarez nodded.
“Yes.”
She handed the envelope to me.
“Your mother asked me to give you this when the right moment came.”
I stared at the sealed envelope.
My mother had been gone for eighteen months.
And somehow, on the night my family finally learned the truth about my career, a letter from her had found its way into my hands.
PART 3
For several seconds, I could only stare at the envelope.
My mother’s handwriting had always leaned slightly to the right, neat but hurried, as though her thoughts were forever moving faster than the pen.
CLAIRE.
Nothing else.
No date.
