Mother had promised us pancakes if we behaved for the camera.

“My foster parents told me you had died in the flood,” Evelyn said.

“And later, when I found out you hadn’t, the state records gave me an address that was twenty years out of date.”

I sat down hard.

“The flood never took you?”

“No.

I was staying with Aunt Lillian that week.

You were visiting Father’s relatives.