Daniel and I both work the next day, and I am all too happy to get out of the stifling apartment where my mother has decided to cancel all her clients and kickstart an organizing campaign. As I’m leaving, she has boxes drug out across the living room from her closet, and a fresh stack of black garbage bags at the ready. But when I come home that night, very little has been accomplished. Piles of old photos, old clothes, and old papers have been shuffled and reshuffled in no certain order. A half-full garbage bag of shoes and makeup sits at the foot of my sofa bed. And Mary is nowhere to be seen.

I step lightly through the carnage, wondering how she was stuffing all this into one wall-length closet with bifold doors. And then my foot hits the plastic bin she kept under her bed. I’m surprised to see it out in the open. Surprised she would risk me finding it. In fact, looking around me, all of this seems unlike her. Mary is a woman who keeps her secrets tucked in dark corners, that much I’ve figured out. There is a disconnect happening if she is dragging things willingly into the light. Or maybe it’s the opposite. Maybe it’s that something has been connected rather than severed. A jolt of awakening. I think of her face when she was holding my cell phone. How long has Father Terry’s memory been packed away in her mind like these boxes from her closet?

I notice the plastic bin at my foot is not the only one on the floor. A nearly identical bin sits on the far side of it. It must have been under the other side of her bed. I pop the lid. More papers—an old car title, receipts for dental work, a letter of resignation from five years ago she wrote to one J.R. Washington, manager at someplace called Capital Hub, in which she accuses him of poor leadership, no vision, and sexual harassment. In that order. Which, in and of itself, tells me she wasn’t totally balanced at the time.

I sift through the meaningless flotsam, wondering why she’s held on to this stuff, when I uncover a manila envelope. I open it and find a thick sheet of cardstock inside. STATE OF LOUISIANA is stamped across the top in block letters. A fancy scroll of blue trails the borders. Just beneath it, Certificate of Live Birth. My hand begins to shake. This has to be it—the birth certificate for the other baby, my sister. I slide the paper out and begin searching with eager eyes.

CHILD’S LAST NAME: Gage

CHILD’S FIRST NAME: Mary