“Not at everything.

Just when she found something funny.”

It was the first description that made her feel like a person instead of a photograph I might someday receive.

He said she had been his first wife.

He said she had loved me.

He said powerful rivals targeted her during a bitter business conflict, that she was killed, and that I disappeared through an illegal adoption network before entering public care under another name.

He described records that had been incomplete, identities that did not line up, leads that failed.