For a while neither spoke.
Finally she said, “My mother kept a box.”
“What box?”
“Things from before the adoption. At least that’s what I think they were. She wouldn’t talk about it.”
“Your adoptive mother?”
“Yes.”
“Is she alive?”
Nora shook her head.
“She died three years ago.”
Julian looked at the ring around Nora’s neck.
“Was that inside?”
“Yes.”
“Anything else?”
Nora hesitated.
“A photograph.”
Julian’s pulse accelerated.
“Of what?”
“Two babies.”
Two hours later Julian stood inside Nora Bell’s house.
He had expected to feel uncomfortable.
Instead he felt as though he had stepped into a life that had developed beside his own without ever touching it.
Family photographs covered the hallway.
Nora holding newborn Sophie.
Nora at a lake.
Nora beside an elderly couple Julian assumed were her parents.
Christmas mornings.
School photographs.
Birthday cakes.
Evidence of decades Amelia had never known existed.
Sophie disappeared upstairs.
Nora returned carrying a rectangular wooden box.
She placed it on the dining table.
“I haven’t opened this since my mother died.”
Julian said nothing.
Nora lifted the lid.
Inside were several letters, an old hospital bracelet, the ring’s original velvet pouch and a black-and-white photograph.
She handed him the photograph.
Two newborn babies slept side by side.
Both wore identical knitted caps.
Behind them, written in faded ink, were four words.
Baby A and Baby B.
Julian’s heart hammered.
“Anything on the back?”
Nora turned it over.
There was a date.
October 19.
The year of Amelia’s birth.
And initials.
E.R.
“Who is E.R.?” Nora asked.
Julian already knew.
“Eleanor Rhodes.”
“Who?”
“Amelia’s biological mother.”
Nora sat down.
“No.”
Julian found an old photograph stored on his phone.
It showed Amelia at twenty-seven beside Eleanor Rhodes, a fragile woman with silver hair.
They had met her only once.
Eleanor had cried through almost the entire conversation.
She had told Amelia that giving her up had been the greatest regret of her life.
But she had never mentioned another baby.
Never mentioned a twin.
Nora stared at Eleanor’s photograph.
“She looks like Sophie.”
Julian looked at the child smiling in a photograph on the wall.
She did.
Not dramatically.
But enough.
Nora opened one of the letters.
Her adoptive mother’s handwriting covered three pages.
She read silently at first.
Then stopped.
“What?”
Nora pushed the letter toward him.
Julian read.
The letter was an apology.
Nora’s mother had written it shortly before dying but apparently never found the courage to give it to her daughter.
She described how she and her husband had been told the biological mother had requested the twins be separated.
They had believed it.
Years later they discovered that wasn’t true.
St. Catherine Family Services had separated twins deliberately because two adoption fees were worth more than one.
Some children had been placed hundreds of miles apart.
Records had been altered.
Birth certificates had been rewritten.
And adoptive parents had been warned that attempts to contact biological families could threaten the legality of their adoptions.
Nora covered her mouth.
Julian continued reading.
One sentence made him stop.
A woman from St. Catherine had contacted Nora’s parents years later and asked whether Nora had ever attempted to find a sister.
Her parents had said no.
The woman told them to keep it that way.
“What year was this?” Julian asked.
Nora checked.
“Five years ago.”
Julian looked up.
“When five years ago?”
Nora read the date.
Three weeks before Amelia died.
Amelia had died in a house fire.
That was what everyone believed.
She had gone to the abandoned family home of Eleanor Rhodes after Eleanor’s death.
Julian had been in another city for work.
At 11:40 that night, a neighbor reported flames.
By morning, the old house was gone.
Investigators blamed damaged electrical wiring.
Amelia’s body was found upstairs.
The case had been closed.
Julian had never questioned it.
Until now.
Nora saw the change in his face.
“What happened?”
“My wife died three weeks after someone contacted your parents about a sister.”
Nora’s expression tightened.
“That doesn’t mean—”
“Amelia was searching.”
“For me?”
“I don’t know.”
Julian began pacing.
“She became obsessed with finding out why Eleanor had given her up. She kept saying there were gaps in the story.”
“What gaps?”
“Eleanor claimed she had signed papers for one child.”
Nora went still.
Julian remembered the night perfectly.
Amelia had been standing in their kitchen with documents covering the table.
“She said the paperwork didn’t make sense. One set of signatures. One medical record. But references to two identification numbers.”