remembered nothing before waking up in the debris of a construction site twenty years ago. No family. No name.
I led him to the tub, pulled on rubber gloves, and scrubbed his shoulder with disgust in my throat.
And there, under twenty years of grime, was a tiny crescent-shaped birthmark.
The sponge slipped from my fingers.
Because I’d seen that birthmark every day of my childhood — on my father, who vanished without a trace twenty years ago, and who I’d been told was never coming home.
PART 2
I fell to my knees on the marble beside that tub, and I pulled the locket out from under my blouse — the locket I’d worn against my heart for twenty years, that I’d never taken off, that my husband had always assumed was just a piece of sentimental jewelry.
I opened it with shaking hands and held it up.
Inside was a
