“What is it?”
“My mother had a sister.”
Lucas stared at me.
“What was her name?”
I remembered the writing beneath that childhood photograph.
Two names.
Evelyn and…
My voice shook as I answered.
“Ruth.”
The room fell silent.
Douglas’s face lost all color.
Ruthie.
The nickname I had always believed belonged only to me.
And suddenly, for the first time in forty-one years, I wondered whether Douglas had invented it at all.
PART 3
For several seconds, I couldn’t hear anything except the soft mechanical hum coming from somewhere behind Douglas’s bed.
The photograph trembled between my fingers.
My mother stood in front of a pale hospital wall, younger than I remembered her at the end of her life. Her hair was pinned back. She wore the navy wool coat she used to save for church and funerals.
And in her arms was a newborn baby.
September 1987.
