And yet the woman in the photograph had my mother’s face.
She stood near a market stall somewhere coastal, wearing sunglasses and a cream scarf, older but unmistakable. Her head was turned slightly, as if someone had called her name.
On the back, written in black ink, were four words.
Ask Cynthia about Nora.
I looked up slowly.
My father’s face was ashen.
“Nora was your mother’s middle name,” he said.
The room seemed to tilt.
“What does Cynthia have to do with my mother?”
Before he could answer, my phone buzzed.
A message from the unknown number Brenda had used.
Don’t come tomorrow. Elias knows.
Then another message appeared.
And below it, an image loaded.
It was a photograph of Brenda’s kitchen table. On it lay a green coat, a cracked phone, and a folded hospital form.
At the top of the form was Brenda’s name.
Halfway down, under emergency contact, someone had written a name in neat blue ink.
Cynthia Mercer.
Not Cynthia Vale.
Not Cynthia Hart, the name she used as Elias’s mother.
Mercer.
My uncle’s last name.
I stared at the screen, unable to breathe.
Then the library phone rang.
My father answered it with a shaking hand.
He listened for less than five seconds before his eyes found mine.
“Ella,” he said quietly, “there’s someone at the gate asking for you.”
“Who?”
He swallowed.
“She says her name is Nora.”
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