I did remember. On our honeymoon, when I was only twenty-three, I had finally told Robert the secret I had carried since I was seventeen. I had given birth to a baby girl and placed her for adoption. I had held her for eleven minutes before she was taken away. I had secretly named her Rose, but I never knew where she went. Robert had held me that night and promised, “We’ll find her someday.” For forty years, I thought he had forgotten those words. He hadn’t. After retiring, he began searching for my daughter. A DNA test eventually connected him to a young woman named Hannah. She was my granddaughter. The envelopes Robert had been giving her contained copies of the letters I had secretly written to my daughter every year. He had found them hidden in an old hatbox and copied them without telling me. He had been trying to show my daughter that I had never forgotten her.

The next morning, everything changed. As Robert and I prepared to leave, the receptionist suddenly looked toward the entrance. “Mrs. Harris,” she whispered, “I think someone is here to see you.” I turned around and saw a woman standing in the doorway. She had dark hair touched with gray. She looked at me, and I immediately recognized my own eyes. Hannah stood behind her, crying. The woman slowly walked toward me. “I drove four hours,” she said. “I almost turned around three times.” It was my daughter. After forty-five years, she was standing in front of me. She didn’t hug me. She simply reached for my hand. “I don’t know what this is yet,” she whispered. “That’s okay,” I said. “We can take our time.” She looked at me for a long moment before asking, “Did you really write me a letter every year?” I nodded through my tears. She squeezed my hand. “Then maybe,” she whispered, “you can write me another one.”