Chapter 15
But now I heard her voice.
Not clearly.
Only one sentence.
When the stars come back, Victor will find you.
I opened my eyes.
Victor looked older than he had an hour earlier.
“Why does the name Annie matter?” I asked.
He walked to the wooden box and removed another photograph.
This one showed his sister Sofia alone.
She sat on the steps of a summer house, smiling at whoever held the camera. In her arms was a baby wrapped in a white blanket.
On the back, someone had written:
Sofia and Annie. Three months old.
I stared at the photograph.
The baby’s face was partly turned away, but one tiny hand was visible above the blanket.
Around the infant’s wrist was a narrow chain bearing the same star-and-branches symbol.
“That baby cannot be me,” I said.
Victor said nothing.
“Daniel was supposed to be my father.”
“He may have been.”
“And Sofia?”
He looked from the photograph to my face.
“Sofia had a daughter.”
“What happened to her?”
“We were told the baby died shortly after birth.”
A terrible stillness entered the room.
“But this photograph says she was three months old.”
“Yes.”
“Who told you she died?”
“My father.”
I looked again at Sofia.
At the curve of her smile.
At the baby held against her heart.
A memory moved inside me—not an image this time, but a feeling.
The scent of lavender.
May you like
A lullaby without words.
A woman crying silently as she buttoned my coat.
