She never knew where to send it.” Natalie took a breath, and steadied herself, and said, “I have one thing I want to ask you, Edith.

And you can say no.” “What is it.” “I want to see them,” Natalie said.

“The scars.” Edith went rigid — the old reflex, forty years deep.

But Natalie only added, gently, “Only if you want to.” And Edith looked down at the photograph of the child in the yellow dress, and then up at the woman that child had become, a whole grown woman standing alive in her room — and something that had been clenched in her for four decades simply let go.

She stood.