During a lull, Hannah took a waterproof envelope from the bottom of her bag. "I brought the letters," she said. "Not all of them. I was afraid I'd lose the originals in the rain, so I packed three and left the rest with a friend."
Nia hesitated before taking the first envelope. Her childhood handwriting slanted across it in purple ink: To Hannah, from Nia. There was a return address belonging to the Brooks family, the first place where Josie had tried to give her a permanent home. Beneath the postmark somebody had written an old administrative notation, followed by a line that said the recipient was no longer at that address.
Inside, twelve-year-old Nia had drawn a small picture of two birds sitting on a telephone wire. The letter told Hannah about her new school, complained about a math teacher who spoke too fast, and promised that she was saving a seat beside her at the next birthday party. At the bottom were words Nia had entirely forgotten writing: If you think I left you, please know I was looking for you before they even finished packing my bag.
Nia read the sentence three times. She had spent years imagining herself as the child who had failed to keep a promise, and here was proof that she had done everything a twelve-year-old could do. She handed the letter back with shaking fingers. "I thought I was weak because I couldn't find you," she said. "I was just a kid."
"We both were," Hannah answered. "I wish somebody had said that to us then."
A gust of rain rattled the window, and the lights dimmed again. Nia glanced toward the kitchen, where Mrs. Ortiz was serving soup to the stranded travelers. She could not go back and sit beside Hannah on that long-ago porch, and she could not demand that the next twenty years erase the last nineteen. But she could pour another cup of tea, help a tired mother get her baby comfortable, and begin asking the questions the two of them had been denied.
"Tell me about your life," she said. "Not the files or the people who kept us apart. Tell me who you are now."
Hannah looked down at Elsie and considered the question. "I'm good at keeping appointments and terrible at keeping houseplants alive," she began. "I worked at a medical office in Harrisburg until it closed, and I'm interviewing at Brookside Family Clinic on Monday. Elsie's father and I aren't together, but we are trying hard to be good parents to her. I want to move here if the job works out, and I was afraid to tell you that because it sounds as though I'm expecting you to make room for me."
"I rent a one-bedroom apartment over a hardware store," Nia said. "I work here most days, and I take classes when I can afford them. I have an application half finished for the nursing program at the community college. I'm not somebody with extra bedrooms or a perfect plan."