Family vacations.
Birthday dinners.
School concerts.
Beach photographs.
Graduation celebrations.
My mother appeared again and again, smiling with her arm around Hannah or standing proudly beside her son.
She had not vanished from the world.
She had only vanished from mine.
I typed a message, erased it, and started again.
“I believe we may have the same mother. Did she ever mention having another daughter named Simone?”
I included my phone number.
The response came the following morning.
“Our mother doesn’t have another daughter.”
I photographed the fifth-birthday card and sent it to her.
Less than a minute later, my phone rang.
“Where did you get that?” a woman demanded.
“From my father’s apartment.”
“She told us she had been married before, but she said she never had children.”
“She did.”
There was a long silence.
“She had me,” I continued. “She chose not to raise me.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“Then meet me.”
We chose a café halfway between our homes.
When Hannah arrived, she was carrying a heavy photo album.
The moment I saw her face, I noticed pieces of myself in it.
The shape of her chin.
The way she narrowed her eyes when she was uncertain.
