A small piece of my mother had come back to me without any photograph or letter.

It came through the man who remembered the way her chair wobbled.

PART 5

By afternoon I had three stacks of papers spread across the dining table: things I knew for certain, things Lucas remembered, and things that still had to be checked.

Mrs.

Henderson sat by the radiator with a mug of tea and waved away my apology for dragging her into it.

“I’ve been waiting a long time to quit keeping other people’s secrets,” she said.