The boy didn’t answer right away.

He only looked at the grave, then at the photo in her shaking hands.

“My mother said you were the only person who could tell me who I am.”

The woman stared at the baby picture.

The child in it had the same eyes as the boy.

But the handwriting on the back was her father’s.

Her dead father’s.

She stepped closer to the grave, her white roses slipping from her arm.

“No,” she whispered. “He wouldn’t…”

The boy pulled another small thing from his pocket.

A gold hospital bracelet.

Tiny.

Bent.

Old.

The woman saw the date and covered her mouth.

It was the day her mother told her she had been born alone.

The boy’s lips trembled.

“My mother said your father paid her to raise me far away. She said I was never supposed to come back.”

The woman looked at the name on the grave.

Her father.

The man she had come to mourn.

The man who had apparently taken a child from her family and buried the secret with himself.

“Who was your mother?” she asked.

The boy swallowed.

“She worked in your house.”

The woman’s eyes filled with tears.

The old memory returned suddenly.

A young maid.

A baby hidden under a blanket.

Her father shouting in the hallway.

Her mother crying behind a locked door.

The woman looked at the boy again, and the truth landed so hard she nearly fell.

“You’re not a stranger,” she whispered.

The boy’s eyes lifted, terrified to hope.

She knelt in the grass, still holding the photo.

“You’re my brother.”