The woman was not Diana. I had seen enough photographs of Diana, Walter’s wife of forty years, to know that much on sight.
The doll was the part that stopped my breath.
I had owned a doll exactly like it. Red yarn hair, a chipped painted smile, a dress my grandmother had sewn from a flour sack. I had buried it under a willow tree when I was seven years old, the week after my mother disappeared and never came home.
Pregnancy & Maternity
“This has to be someone else’s photo,” I said. “This has to be a mistake.”
“Read the letter, Margaret.”
My name, in his hand, at the top of the page. I had seen this handwriting on grocery lists and love notes and the margins of library books he underlined too much. I had never once seen it shake the way it shook on this page.
My dearest Margaret,
I told you the truth about how I made my fortune — commercial shipping, forty years of it. I never told you what it cost me to start.
Your mother’s name was Rose. You were three years old when I left.
I stopped there.
