Chapter 3: The Photograph in the Lining
It was a folded piece of paper.
Not a letter.
A photograph, printed on regular copy paper, the edges soft from years inside the bag.
She held it out to me.
"I found it tucked into the lining.
There's a pocket in there, near the bottom seam."
I knew the pocket.
I'd sewn it in myself.
Rosie had asked for it so she could keep her bus pass where it wouldn't fall out.
My fingers weren't working right.
I took the paper with both hands.
It was a photograph of a young woman sitting at a table in what looked like a diner.
She was turned slightly away from the camera, but I could see her profile.
Dark hair.
A small scar near her left eyebrow from when she'd fallen off her bike at nine years old.
I sat down on the nearest bench.
I didn't decide to.
My legs just stopped.
"Is that her?" the woman asked.
I couldn't answer.
"Is that your daughter?"
"I don't know," I said.
And then, because that was a lie: "Yes.
I think so.
I don't know how old this is."
The woman sat down beside me without asking.
She didn't say anything for a moment.
Around us the boardwalk kept moving — children, strollers, a man selling lemonade from a cart — and none of it touched us.
"There's something written on the back," she said gently.
I turned it over.
The handwriting was Rosie's.
I would know it anywhere.
She always pressed too hard with the pen, and the letters leaned slightly right, and she made her sevens with a little crossbar the way I'd taught her when she was five.
It said: *If anyone finds this — I'm okay.
I just couldn't go back.
Please don't look for me.
— R.*
I read it three times.
*I'm okay.*
She had been okay.
At some point, she had been okay enough to write that.
To think about someone finding it.
To think about me, even if she didn't say my name.
"When did you buy the bag?" I asked.
"Maybe 2015?
2016?
I honestly can't be certain."
Eight years ago.
Seven years after she left.
She had still been out there, seven years after she left, and she had been okay enough to write those words.
"Which thrift store?" I asked again.
"Please.
I know you said you don't remember, but try.
The city.
The state.
Anything."
She pressed her lips together.
"It was in Virginia somewhere.
I was visiting my sister.
I remember it was near the water because we walked to it from her house." She shook her head.
"I'm so sorry.
I wish I could tell you more."
Virginia.
Near the water.
It wasn't nothing.
It was the first real thing I'd had in sixteen years.
"My name is Carol," the woman said.
"Carol Marsh."
"Diane," I said.
We sat there another minute.
The photograph was still in my hands.
"I almost donated the bag twice," Carol said quietly.
"I kept thinking I should.
But something stopped me.
I don't know what." She paused.
"Maybe it was the keychain.
I couldn't bring myself to take it off."
I looked down at the little silver moon.
The paint worn off the back from years of Rosie's thumb running over it the way she did when she was nervous.
"She used to rub it," I said.
"Like a worry stone."
Carol didn't say anything.
She just nodded.
I folded the photograph carefully and held it against my chest for a moment.
Then I put it in my pocket.
"Can I take a picture of the inside of the bag?" I asked.
"The name.
Where she wrote it."
"You can have the bag," Carol said.
I looked at her.
"It was always hers," she said.
"I think I was just keeping it until you found it."
I didn't cry on the boardwalk.
I waited until I was in my car with the door closed and the bag in my lap and the photograph in my hand.
Then I cried for a long time.
Not the way I used to cry in the first years — that was a different kind, the kind that felt like drowning.
This was something else.
Something that had a bottom to it.
When I was done I sat very still and looked at the photograph again.
She had a coffee cup in front of her.
She was looking at something off to the left.
She looked tired but not broken.
She looked like a woman who had made a life somewhere, even if I didn't know where.
I drove home with the bag on the passenger seat.
That night I called my sister.
"I found something," I said.
"What do you mean?"
"I found something.
I need you to help me figure out what to do next."
There was a long pause on the line.
May you like
"Diane," my sister said slowly.
"What did you find?"
