The photograph trembled between my fingers.
“My mother was holding a baby in September 1987.”
Lucas nodded.
“Yes.”
“And someone wrote our names on the photograph.”
“Yes.”
“Who?”
“We don’t know.”
I looked at Douglas.
“You’ve had this photograph for twenty-three years and you never found out?”
His expression twisted.
“I tried.”
“How?”
“I hired someone.”
“A private investigator?”
“Yes.”
That startled me.
Douglas had always been the sort of person who spent twenty minutes comparing prices before buying cereal.
The idea of him hiring an investigator seemed almost absurd.
“What did he find?”
“Very little at first. The hospital where the photograph was taken closed in the nineties. Records had been transferred twice. Some were destroyed in a flood. Others were incomplete.”
Lucas continued.
“The investigator eventually confirmed your mother volunteered there for about six months in 1987.”
I blinked.
“My mother?”
“Yes.”
“She never worked in a hospital.”
