A tiny piece of paper towel…no—cloth. It was old and scrunched up. It looked to Juno like there was embossing on it, like on a hankie her grandfather had kept in his breast pocket. She lifted it closer to her face, rolling it a little between her fingers. The yellow color, she realized, was blood, very faded old blood.

Juno dropped the scrap in disgust. Why would Winnie keep this tiny rag? And whose blood was it? She lowered herself very slowly to her knees to retrieve the square, bending all the way down to the rug to pluck it up. For a moment Juno wasn’t sure if she’d be able to get back up; her back seized at the same time her knees locked like two defunct wheels, Nigel’s syrup not yet coating her pain. She pushed through it, stumbling to her feet. Breathing like a winded rhino, she returned the scrap to the envelope. It could be anything, she supposed, depending on how weird Winnie truly was. Juno had once had a patient who collected his fingernail clippings in a mason jar. There was one more envelope, and this one felt heavier. Bracing herself, Juno wrinkled her nose as she tented it, hoping to see something else, but when she looked inside the second, there were not one, but six bloody pieces of cloth.

She’d never wanted to be rid of anything quite as badly. What exactly had Winnie’s mother been smoking when she was baking the twins? Hands moving quickly, she started to roll the envelopes back into the wad. Her knuckles locked painfully, but for once, she was too preoccupied to notice. Shaking her left hand to loosen some of the stiffness, she lifted her right hand—the one holding the envelopes—up to her face. Juno’s old eyes worked hard, probably so hard she’d have a headache later. But there it was: two envelopes and six bloody scraps. After she put the box back, she walked stiffly to the bathroom where she held her hands under scorching water.