I leaned over her shoulder, my eyes tracing the cursive writing. The name on the top of the page was my own, but the dates started years before I thought my life had even begun.
“There are numbers here I don’t understand,” I said, pointing to a column that ended with a total of four thousand dollars.
“That was the travel,” Desiree said, looking up at me with her head tilted. “We went as far as Knoxville and Chattanooga three times in ninety-six, looking for anyone who knew about the silver engraving.”
“Why would you look for that?” I asked.
“Because we knew whoever made that piece would eventually come looking for the girl who had it,” she said.
She turned the page to reveal a small, clear sleeve taped to the heavy paper. Inside was a photocopy of a birth registry page from a county hospital, but the space for the parents’ names was left completely blank.
“Your grandmother told me it was a family piece,” I said, my voice barely reaching above the hum of the small space heater in the corner. “She said she wore it when she was young.”
