She was holding a yellowed envelope.
“This is a letter from our mother. She asked me to give it to you when the time came for the truth to be revealed.”
At that moment, Robert came out of the bedroom.
When he saw the woman, he stopped in his tracks.
“Linda?… But you promised you would never come back.”
The woman smiled bitterly.
“I promised to stay silent, Robert. But I never promised that my sister would have to live a lie for the rest of her life.”
I snatched the letter from her hands.
The very first sentence, written in my mother’s handwriting, terrified me.
“Dear Mary, you were born with a twin sister whom we were forced to give to another family. But the most terrible thing isn’t that we hid her existence from you…”
I looked at Linda.
She was crying.
I continued reading.
“When your daughter Emily was born 35 years ago, something happened that Robert begged me never to tell you about. Your sister was also at the hospital that day. And if you ever discover what really happened in the maternity ward, you may never be able to look at your husband the same way again.”
