new life under a different name, always haunted by the fragments of her past. It wasn’t until she stumbled upon the dress in a thrift store hundreds of miles away—the very gown I had donated all those years ago—that the final pieces of her memory snapped into place.
The dress had been a beacon, a tangible link to the mother who had loved her. She had recognized the pearls, the specific pattern of my handiwork, and the floodgates of her past had finally burst open. She had spent the last
