The key was hidden inside a hollowed-out copy of an old encyclopedia in Richard’s study.

I found it on a rainy Tuesday while dusting the shelves.

It was a small brass key, heavy and cold in my palm.

It fit the lock of the metal box Richard kept at the bottom of his wardrobe.

He had told me the box contained only old tax documents from before we met.

When I opened it, there were no tax papers.

Inside lay a single photograph, protected by a plastic sleeve.

The picture showed a young woman with dark, wavy hair sitting in a hospital bed.

She was holding a newborn baby wrapped in a pink flannel blanket.

I recognized that blanket immediately.

It was the same blanket our adopted daughter, Claire, had been wrapped in when we brought her home eighteen years ago.

I stared at the woman’s face in the photograph.

She had a small, crescent-shaped scar just below her left collarbone.

My breath caught in my throat as my hand began to shake.

I knew that scar.

I had seen it traced in black ink on my husband’s chest for two decades.

Richard had always told me his chest tattoo was just a piece of flash art he got on a whim in his twenties.

He said the face of the woman in the ink was entirely fictional.

But the woman in the photo was real.

She was the woman on his chest, and she was holding our daughter.

I turned the photograph over.

On the back, written in Richard’s neat, block handwriting, was a name and a date.

*Rose. June 12, 2004.*

Claire’s birthday.

My chest tightened as the walls of the bedroom seemed to close in on me.

Our closed adoption had been arranged entirely by Richard through a private agency.

He had told me the mother wanted absolutely no contact and wished to remain anonymous.

It had all been a lie.

I spent the next three days searching online directories and local records.

I found a address for a Rose Vance living three towns over.

I called her number, my voice trembling when she answered.