“She said her name was Marlene,” the baker whispered. “She said she was family.”

My eyes moved across the crowded backyard until they stopped on a woman standing near the back fence, half-hidden behind the balloon arch. She wore dark sunglasses and a pale gray coat, far too heavy for the warm afternoon. While everyone else laughed and celebrated, she simply watched Sophie.

Daniel lifted the strange object toward the sunlight. It was an old silver locket, scratched and tarnished with age. He carefully opened it.

Inside was a tiny folded photograph.

And three words were scratched into the metal:

“Ask her mother.”

Sophie suddenly went pale. She looked at me, then toward the woman standing by the fence.

“Mom,” she whispered. “Why is she here?”

Before I could answer, the woman slowly removed her sunglasses.

And after thirty years, I was staring into the eyes of the sister I had told everyone was gone.