The Woman in My Dress

He was adopted.

The family moved abroad within the year.

Two letters came, and then none, and every subsequent attempt Maya made — at eighteen, at twenty-four, at thirty — hit the same closed doors, because closed adoptions are closed, and because she had a common surname and no money and no idea what he was called now.

The one thing she had done, on the day they took him, was put a stuffed rabbit into his arms.

It was grey and their mother had made it out of a coat, and it had one ear, because the other had come off in the wash the year before and had never been found.