In another life, I would have told you stories about your grandmother and made you dumplings, which are the only thing I ever learned to cook. I would have held you every night until you would no longer let me. We would have laughed and sung songs and played hide-and-seek. And I would have left you treasures as my own mother did when I was old enough to find them.

I would have told you everything I knew about your father, whose name was Tamas Vargha. The most noble man I ever met.

We would have fought, I am sure, over your independence, which I would have been fearful to grant you. Wanting to protect you, which I think, aside from love, must be the biggest instinct a mother has.

I did not know my own mother until I was the age you are now as I write this—eighteen. I knew her only a year before she was taken. I see her face before me every day, trace the faint lines of her mouth with the finger of my mind. I have always been like that, never forgetting anything I have seen, and so the image of your face—dangerously provided too few times throughout your life by a mutual friend—has always been in front of me. You are beautiful.

I hoped that we would begin a new life together one day. I will hold out hope until my dying breath, but you should know I have sworn to leave the Scions nothing. Having stolen you from my life, they will not benefit from its memory.

Maybe you resent me or even hate me for the fact that I had to leave you. Or maybe you have some vision of me greater than anything I can live up to. Nothing you do or have done or are could possibly fall short of my vision of you. You were perfect when you were born. You are perfect to me now. Perfect, even in your mistakes. Nothing—not even you—would ever convince me otherwise.

I seal this letter with several notes and hope I have time to give them to Imre. He knows to give them to you, and will not dare to look at them in order to protect them. You are too old by now for songs and I cannot hold you. But I leave treasure for you. Find it. Live. Let my life’s work be my humble offering for all the years I could not be the mother I hoped to you.

I love you, Audra, and will have many things to say to God about my loss of you. But many more to say for the gift of you.

Amerie . . . Mother

It is dated three years ago.

I read the pages again and again, searching every word for the cadence of her voice. Aching to hear it.

At last I cover my face out of sight of the driver, and sob.

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