I took the photograph with trembling fingers. In it, my mother looked impossibly young, maybe twenty, standing in a garden with her arm around this same woman, who was also young then, both of them laughing at something outside the frame. On the back, in ink faded to brown, my mother had written my name and beneath it a single line: “If she ever finds you, tell her everything.”

“Sit with me,” the woman said gently, lowering herself onto the stone bench near the path. My legs felt weak, so I obeyed. “My name is Rosalind,” she began. “Your mother and I were closer than sisters once, long before she married your father, long before you were born.” She paused, pressing the photograph flat against her knee. “The flowers were never the point. Throwing them away was the signal we agreed on. It was the only way I could be sure you would eventually come early enough to catch me here.” Then her voice dropped. “Because I made your mother a promise I have kept for thirty years.”