Part 2: The Mark on Sophie’s Foot
The name was Rose.
Grandma said it again, softer this time, like a prayer she had said so many times the words had worn smooth.
Ben didn’t lock the door. He looked at me, and I shook my head slightly. Whatever this was, I didn’t want to frighten anyone.
But I did kneel down beside the high chair.
Sophie was smearing frosting on her tray and babbling happily. I slid the little white sock off her left foot.
There it was. A small pale pink mark on the arch of her foot, shaped like a crescent moon.
I had seen it a thousand times. Our pediatrician said it was a harmless birthmark and would likely fade.
Grandma let out a long, shaking breath when she saw it.
My mother had that mark, she said. I have that mark. Your mother had it, Claire, though you never did.
Then she turned and pointed again, and this time I followed her finger.
She was pointing at Margaret Ellis.
Margaret was eighty-two years old and the mother of our next-door neighbor, Dana. She had flown in from Ohio for a two-week visit.
She was sitting by the front window in a soft blue cardigan, holding a paper plate of cake. She looked as confused as the rest of us.
Grandma’s voice cracked. Please, she said. Don’t let her leave. I lost her once already.
That was the terror I had seen in her eyes. Not fear of anyone in the room.
Fear of losing someone.
Margaret set her plate down slowly. Dana stepped closer to her mother, her arm protective around her shoulders.
Grandma asked Margaret, very politely, if she would be willing to show her left foot.
Nobody moved. The only sound was Sophie tapping her spoon against the high chair tray.
Margaret looked at Dana. Then she looked at my grandmother for a long moment.
Something passed across her face. I couldn’t name it then. I think now it was recognition of a feeling she had carried her whole life without knowing why.
She reached down and slipped off her sandal.
There, on the arch of her left foot, was a crescent moon. Pale with age, but unmistakable.
Dana put a hand over her mouth.
Grandma reached for the thin gold chain around her neck. At the end of it hung a tiny brass key. I had seen that chain every day of my life and never once wondered what it opened.
Her hands shook so badly that I had to help her fit the key into the padlock.
The lid of the red suitcase creaked open. It smelled of cedar and old paper.
On the very top, wrapped in yellowed tissue, was a tiny knitted baby sock. Cream wool, with a pink ribbon threaded through the cuff.
Beneath it was a small card from a place called the Brookhaven Home for Girls. On it, in faded ink, was a date.
March 3, 1944.
Margaret stared at the card. Her voice came out barely above a whisper.
That’s my birthday, she said.
Part 3: What Was Inside the Red Suitcase
We moved the party into the backyard so the children could play. The adults drifted home one by one, sensing something important was happening.
Only five of us stayed in the living room. Grandma, Margaret, Dana, Ben, and me.
Sophie fell asleep in my arms with frosting still on her cheek.
Then my grandmother told us a story she had never told anyone.
In 1943, she was eighteen years old and in love with a boy named Thomas Hale. He shipped out to Europe that fall.
He was killed in France the following winter. He never knew she was expecting.
Her parents were devastated and ashamed. In those days, a girl in her situation was sent away quietly.
They sent her to the Brookhaven Home for Girls, three hundred miles from home.
On March 3, 1944, she gave birth to a daughter. She held her for one night.
