Inside were neatly folded clothes, an old digital camera, a child’s yellow sweater, a small wooden rolling pin, and a sealed brown envelope.
The rolling pin looked strangely familiar.
I checked the camera and found four photographs. One showed my mother standing outside a brick house. Another showed her sitting beside a frail elderly woman. The last photograph was of an old picture showing a little girl in a yellow sweater.
I recognized the child immediately.
It was me.
And the woman holding me was Aunt Maggie, someone I hadn’t seen in decades.
I remembered spending afternoons at her little white house, helping her bake and eating strawberries on the porch. Mom had always told me she was an old family friend who’d moved away.
I’d assumed she’d died years ago.
Using the address from the photographs, I discovered that Aunt Maggie had once lived in the house I remembered from childhood. But the new owners knew nothing about where she’d gone.
