Chapter 3 - THE PHOTOGRAPH
Finn refused to release my hand.
In his bedroom, he crawled beneath the blanket but stayed sitting.
His room had once looked like a designer’s idea of childhood.
Perfect shelves.
Perfect blue walls.
Perfect wooden toys nobody touched.
Fourteen months with Finn had changed it.
Dinosaurs lined the windowsill.
Paper planets hung crookedly from the ceiling.
A yellow blanket fort occupied one corner.
Life had invaded the room.
Finn hugged his stuffed fox.
“Does Dad not like you?”
“I think your dad is angry about a lot of things.”
“At you?”
“Sometimes.”
“At me?”
“No.”
Finn looked unconvinced.
“Sometimes he looks mad when I’m scared.”
“That doesn’t mean you did anything wrong.”
“Then why?”
There was no answer a five-year-old deserved to carry.
“Sometimes grown-ups get scared too.”
Finn thought about it.
“Dad is scared of sirens?”
“Maybe not sirens.”
“What then?”
“Losing people, maybe.”
His expression changed.
“Like Mommy.”
“Yes.”
Finn’s mother, Elena, had died when he was two.
Car accident.
Rain.
A highway outside Chicago.
Afterward, the Rossi house became a fortress.
More guards.
More gates.
More silence.
Finn hugged the fox tighter.
“I don’t remember her voice.”
“I know.”
“Dad does.”
“Yes.”
“Why won’t he tell me things?”
That was the question beneath nearly every nightmare.
“He might not know how.”
Finn looked at me.
“Do you?”
“Know how to tell you about your mom?”
“Yes.”
“Only the things I know.”
“You didn’t know her.”
“No.”
Then he whispered:
“But she knew you.”
I froze.
“What?”
Finn slid off the bed.
He pulled The Velveteen Rabbit from his bookshelf.
Inside the back cover was a paper pocket I had never noticed.
He removed a folded photograph.
My breath stopped.
A younger Elena Rossi stood outside a coffee shop.
Beside her was a woman I recognized instantly.
My mother.
On the back, in Mom’s handwriting:
ELENA + ME — NORTHWEST FAMILY CENTER, 2017.
I sat down slowly.
Finn climbed beside me.
“Dad says Mommy kept it.”
“Where did you get this?”
“Her box.”
“What box?”
“Dad’s closet.”
I stared at him.
Then Finn said:
“There’s a letter too.”
My pulse changed.
“What letter?”
He went to his toy chest.
From beneath stuffed animals, he pulled out a white envelope.
My name was written across it.
HARPER.
Not my mother’s handwriting.
May you like
Elena’s.
And Finn had been hiding it for four months.
