people who called her daughter.
Thomas handed her a photograph.
Nora stood beneath a flowering tree, smiling at the camera.
She had Peter’s dark eyes and Mara’s dimple.
Mara touched the picture.
“She’s beautiful.”
“She is,” Thomas said.
“Does she know I never gave her away?”
“She knows what we’ve found.
But she needs to speak with you herself.”
Mara lowered the photograph.
“What if she doesn’t want me?”
Micah, who had remained quiet, finally spoke.
“Mrs.
Bell, she came here because she wants to find out who you are.
She asked us not to surprise you without explaining first.”
Mara turned toward the gate.
A silver car was pulling into the parking lot.
***
For thirty years, Mara had imagined her daughter’s return in countless ways.
Sometimes Lily was still a little girl, running toward her through a crowded train station.
Sometimes she was a teenager, angry and confused, demanding to know why her mother had disappeared.
Mara had never pictured a grown woman standing beside a silver car, holding a carefully folded piece of blue fabric.
Nora Ellis was thirty, with shoulder-length dark hair and a charcoal winter coat.
Her fingers tightened around the quilt as she walked toward the loading dock.
She stopped several feet from Mara.
Neither woman spoke.
Then Nora unfolded the cloth.
It was the other half of Lily’s baby quilt.
The yellow bird Mara had stitched thirty years earlier was divided by the cut.
Its missing wing was on the fragment Thomas carried.
Anna Ellis had saved the blanket because it was the only belonging that had arrived with her adopted daughter.
Nora looked from the fabric to Mara’s face.
“Did you make this?”
Mara nodded.
“I made it before you were born.
I wasn’t very good at sewing.”
Nora looked down at the crooked stitches.
“My mother always said the bird looked like it was trying to fly sideways.”
Mara laughed once, then covered her mouth.
“Peter said the same thing.”
“Peter?”
“Your father.”
Nora went still.
“I was told he wasn’t known.”
“He was my husband.
His name was Peter Bell.
He died before you were born.”
Mara described the man who had loved their daughter before he’d ever held her: how he sang badly while making breakfast, how he left handwritten jokes in her coat pockets, and how he had painted a small wooden cradle yellow because he thought every baby deserved something cheerful.
Nora listened with tears in her eyes.
Then she asked the question Mara had feared most.
“Why did they tell me you didn’t want me?”
Mara stepped closer.
“I wanted you every day.”
Nora looked at her, searching for uncertainty.
“I need to know the truth.
Even if it’s difficult.”
Mara nodded.
“I went into that office because I was trying to find help for three boys.
I let a nurse take you into a warm room.
That was the last time I held you.”
Her voice broke.
“They told me you were dead.
I fought them.
Then I spent years believing I’d failed you.”
Nora held the quilt against her chest.
“My parents told me I was adopted because another woman had made a loving decision.
They believed it.
They never knew you were trying to get me back.”
“I don’t blame them for loving
