"Claire."
Matilda closed her eyes.
Something clicked, then, in the back of my memory. A sealed box I'd stored so carefully I'd almost forgotten it existed.
Something clicked, then, in the back of my memory.
Months after Claire disappeared, I'd found some old paperwork tucked into a folder in her desk. Foster care documents, the kind with names redacted and dates faded. There'd been a line, almost incidental, about a possible biological sibling.
I'd set it aside in a grief fog and never gone back to it. Claire had mentioned once, quietly, that she used to search for information about her birth family, but she never found anything that stuck.
None of us spoke for a moment.
"She has six children," Noah said finally. "She had six children who grew up without her."
A tear slipped down Matilda's cheek.
There'd been a line, almost incidental, about a possible biological sibling.
