She handed me Thomas’s letter.
“Please,” she whispered. “Read it. I can’t.”
I unfolded the paper.
The woman in Thomas’s locket was indeed Susan and Noah’s mother.
But she wasn’t his lover.
She was his younger sister.
Her name was Elise.
Thomas wrote about how close they had been before Elise ran away as a teenager.
Years later, he learned that she was sick and had two children who were in foster care.
He went to find her.
But he arrived too late.
Elise had died, and her children had entered foster care.
Thomas immediately began bringing Noah and Susan home.
He never told them the whole story because he wanted them to learn about their mother in their own time.
But Susan found the photograph first.
She misunderstood it.
She believed Thomas had been romantically involved with Elise and had abandoned her.
When she confronted him, Thomas tried to explain.
