Chapter 2
I finished my shift because I didn’t know what else to do.
The manager offered to send me home, but going home meant sitting alone with the photograph and the address. Staying meant carrying plates while the dining room pretended nothing had happened.
I chose the pretending.
At four-thirty, the last lunch customers left. The restaurant settled into its slower afternoon rhythm, with the coffee machine hissing and the dishwasher running somewhere behind the kitchen. I sat in the booth farthest from the windows and enlarged the picture on my phone.
The image broke into squares beneath my fingers.
Margaret’s face was younger, but unmistakable. Her light hair was loose around her shoulders instead of pinned in an updo. She looked exhausted. The baby was wrapped in a pale blanket, and a small corner of silver showed near the blanket’s edge.
The locket.
I zoomed in again.
There was writing on the back of the photograph. I hadn’t seen it through the glass. The letters were faint and slanted.
M. ASHFORD.
Under that was a date.
I copied it into the notes app. The date was more than twenty years earlier.
Below the date, almost hidden by a crease, was one word.
EMILY.
I stopped breathing for a moment.
The manager set a mug of coffee on the table. “You want me to sit?”
I looked up. “Did you see what was written on the back?”
“No.” She pulled into the opposite side of the booth. “What does it say?”
I turned the phone toward her.
Her eyes moved across the screen. “That’s your name.”
“I know.”
“Do you know the date?”
“No.”
She didn’t ask what I was thinking. That was one of the reasons I trusted her. She let silence stay silence instead of filling it with a conclusion.
Margaret had waited outside near the host stand. Thomas had gone to make a phone call. I could see him through the narrow opening beside the kitchen doors, standing with his back to us and one hand pressed against his forehead.
I texted Margaret.
Can we talk about the picture?
Her answer came quickly.
Yes. Please.
I asked her to sit down. She approached without her husband and took the chair across from me. She looked at the phone, then closed her eyes briefly.
“I didn’t know he had that,” she said.
“Who took it?”
“I don’t know.”
“That’s not what I asked.”
Her hands rested in her lap. The old locket was tucked inside her handbag now. “Someone took photographs at the hospital.”
“Was I born there?”
“Yes.”
The answer landed harder than I expected. I had always known I was born somewhere. I had never expected a stranger to confirm it while a restaurant emptied around us.
“Why is my name on the back?”
Margaret looked at the window. “Because that was the name we gave you.”
“We?”
She swallowed. “Thomas and me.”
I waited.
She did not reach for me. I noticed that. She kept her hands where I could see them.
“I’m not asking you to believe me,” she said. “I know how this looks.”
“It looks like you recognized me.”
“I did.”
“And Thomas knew what that photograph was.”
“I think he did.”
The words were careful. Too careful.
I slid the phone closer to her. “I need to know what happened to me.”
“I want to tell you.”
“Not here. And not with him.”
Her face tightened, but she nodded. “All right.”
“If I meet the man from the car, it’ll be somewhere public. You won’t bring Thomas.”
“I won’t.”
“And you won’t call me your daughter in front of anyone.”
Margaret looked down at the table. For a second, pain moved across her face so plainly that I almost apologized. Then she lifted her eyes again.
“I won’t,” she said.
Thomas appeared at the end of the aisle.
His gaze went to Margaret, then to my phone.
“I’m taking my wife home,” he said.
Margaret stood. “I’ll be there in a minute.”
He didn’t move.
I put the phone in my apron. “You can leave.”
His jaw flexed. “This is a family matter.”
“Then you should’ve handled it before a stranger had to show up in the parking lot.”
Margaret inhaled sharply.
Thomas looked at her, and something passed between them that I couldn’t read. Not affection. Not exactly anger. A warning, maybe.
He turned away first.
After they left, I stayed in the booth until the manager turned off half the lights. I copied the address from the note onto paper, then searched it on my phone. It led to a narrow road beyond the edge of town, near a stretch of county land and an abandoned roadside building.
I didn’t go.
Instead, I drove home with the lockets on my mind.
My apartment was small enough that I could hear the refrigerator click on from the couch. I placed my locket on the coffee table and called my mother.
She answered on the fourth ring.
“Hey,” she said. “You okay?”
I looked at the silver chain in my palm.
“Did you ever know a Margaret Ashford?”
There was a pause.
Not the normal kind. This one had weight.
“Why would you ask me that?”
Before I could answer, someone knocked on my apartment door.
I froze.
May you like
Another knock followed, slower this time.
Through the peephole, I saw Thomas Ashford standing in the hallway.
