“She said it was old grown-up trouble.

She said you should leave it alone.”

“Did she say who sent it?”

Renata shook her head.

Then she folded her drawing once, carefully, and slipped it into her school folder.

I watched her carry the folder to the hallway.

The question I had been avoiding for four years had become a question my daughter was trying to answer with a pencil.

Who was the woman in the picture, and why had my mother made her sound like someone I might use as a reason to stop loving my own child?