Joan glanced around nervously.
“I can’t do this here.”
A bitter laugh escaped me.
“You disappeared for eight years and appeared beside your daughter in a beach changing room. You lost the right to choose the setting.”
“Jess—”
“No. You let me bury you.”
My voice shook as the memories came rushing back.
Eight years earlier, Joan had taken Ruth to stay at an old farmhouse for the weekend.
Joan had been twenty-six then. She was young, overwhelmed, and too proud to admit when she needed help.
During the night, the farmhouse caught fire.
Ruth was found nearly fifty yards away from the building, sitting in the grass beside the family dog and crying for her mother.
No one understood how a one-year-old child had traveled that distance alone.
A body was discovered inside the burned house.
The authorities told us it was Joan.
The damage had been too severe for an ordinary identification, and the casket had remained closed.
I buried my sister on a cold, gray morning.
Then I went home with her baby.
For weeks, Ruth woke crying for her mother. She reached toward every woman who had hair like Joan’s.
I could not give her the person she wanted, so I gave her everything else I had.
My time.
My home.
My patience.
My future.
Now the woman I had mourned was standing in front of me.
Alive.
“You let Ruth grow up believing you were gone,” I said. “You let me raise her while she cried for you.”
“I saved her,” Joan whispered.
I stopped.
“What did you say?”
“The night of the fire,” she explained. “I carried Ruth out through the side door. The dog followed us. I left her far enough away from the house and told him to stay beside her.”
My chest tightened.
“So that’s how she was found in the field?”
Joan nodded.
It was the answer to a question that had haunted me for years.
“Then why didn’t you stay with her?”
“There was another woman inside.”
I stared at her.
“Who?”
“A woman from work. She had just moved to town and was staying with me temporarily. You never met her. She came along because I didn’t want to make the drive alone with a baby.”
Joan wrapped her arms around herself.
“She was sleeping in the back room. After I carried Ruth outside, I went back for her.”
Her voice became unsteady.
“I remember the smoke. I remember trying to reach the hallway. After that, everything disappeared.”
She looked down at her trembling hands.
“The next thing I remember clearly is waking in a hospital. My purse and identification had burned. I couldn’t speak properly for a while. I was confused, badly injured, and unable to tell anyone who I was.”
I tried to follow her explanation, but anger kept rising through me.
“By the time you remembered, we had already buried the other woman?”
“Yes.”
“When did your memory return?”
“Not all at once. At first, there were flashes. A baby crying. Your face. Our childhood home. Then more came back over the next few weeks.”
Her eyes lifted to mine.
“Eventually, I remembered everything.”
“Everything?”
“Yes.”
“You remembered your daughter?”
She nodded.
“You remembered me?”
Another nod.
“Then why didn’t you come home?”
Joan’s face crumpled.
“I was afraid.”
