Rather than losing my temper entirely I retrieved the small wooden urn I had just brought back from my trip and placed it firmly on the kitchen counter in front of Linda. Tucked carefully beneath the lid of that urn was a very old photograph my sister June had recently discovered among the belongings of our late mother. The picture showed Robert as a young man standing beside a teenage girl with a long braid who was someone I had never been able to identify. When Linda looked at the photograph her entire demeanor changed as she began to tremble and frantically demanded to know where I had found it. Before she could hide the urn away from her son David who had just walked into the room I took the photograph back and turned it over to reveal a handwritten message from Robert. My husband had written that he hoped his little sister Linda would someday come home. The kitchen went entirely silent as David recognized his own mother in the old picture prompting me to demand an explanation for why my late husband referred to her as his sister.
