“They handed me a sealed envelope from a lawyer named Pendelton.”

I rubbed my left thumb across my right knuckles, feeling the dry skin move over the bone.

“That’s Arthur,” I said.

“He wrote a letter saying my birth family had moved to Oklahoma,” she said.

“He wrote that there was no point looking because a judge had sealed the records.”

“Arthur got paid fifty dollars a month to keep that lie going,” I said.

“I promised myself I wouldn’t search while Thomas and Martha were living,” Sarah said.