The muscles in his jaw bunch then release. “She had bigger dreams.” He passes an SUV then pulls back into the right lane. He’s a much more cautious driver than I am—signals every lane change, stays within the speed limit.

“Do you hate your mother?” I ask.

“I feel sorry for her. She thinks that people like you can bring back the dead.”

I challenge, “What if people like me could, at least for a few minutes?”

“Then, assuming you always believed that your bio parents were dead, why didn’t you ever try to connect with them?”

“I told you on the train, it felt like a betrayal.”

Thomas shakes his head. “Doesn’t ring true.”

The answer slips free like a fish off the hook. “I can’t.”

“Why not?”

“I don’t know.”

The set of Thomas’s mouth tells me he thinks my inability to connect with my birth parents is proof that I’m a fraud. What I don’t tell him is years ago I tried. Each attempt brought on panic attacks that burned through me like wildfire. My therapist at the time said it meant childhood trauma. It was easier to drop that shrink than to dig into a past that no longer mattered. I let Thomas’s reaction go for now and tentatively press fingers against the lumps in the bottom corner of the envelope.

“What else is in there?”

I turn over the envelope. Pieces of plastic tumble onto my palm. They’re toy figures. The smallest is a girl with brown braids. She wears a white dress with pink flowers that look like dahlias. It’s the same dress I wore in my dream about the beach and similar to the comforter I ordered as a kid for my bedroom in High River. The one I refused to replace. Beside the girl is a woman in a sleeveless yellow sundress and straw hat. Thomas glances at them and it makes me feel . . . exposed. I push the narrow red and orange pieces around then hold out my hand. “What do you think these were?”

“Turn that big one over?”

I rearrange the pieces. We see it at the same time and say in unison, “A swing set.”

“Does it mean anything to you?” Thomas pushes.

I poke at the two figures. The little girl’s braids stream behind her. The woman’s suntanned arms are held out . . . The woman was pushing the little girl on a swing . . . My mind casts its net into the past . . . cracked vinyl seats beneath my legs . . . the long driveway shaded by oak trees . . . a big white house . . . flower boxes with bright yellow blooms . . . my hand clenched around the only things that were mine . . . a walk up the flagstone path . . . my new foster parents on the front step . . . the Japanese woman reached for my hand and my treasures spilled to the ground . . .