Crickets sang beneath the hedges.
A warm breeze moved through the trees.
I stood on my porch and looked toward Grandma's house.
Her living-room curtains were open.
I could see her sitting beside Mom, laughing at something.
For a moment, I remembered the day everything began.
The mysterious young delivery driver.
The cheerful elderly widow who told me she'd fallen in love.
The unanswered phone calls.
The package delivered to the wrong doorstep.
The quiet house.
The tapping beneath the floor.
I remembered standing at the basement door and hearing her whisper:
Please… help me.
At the time, I thought I was simply helping my elderly neighbor.
A woman who had been kind to me since childhood.
I never imagined that behind the door was someone who had spent her entire adult life carrying a secret about my family.
Or that the man who had tried to steal her home would accidentally set in motion the discovery that reunited a mother and daughter after more than sixty years.
