I’d worn the same battered silver locket since I was a baby and never knew why. Then one question from a former client made me realize my past wasn’t buried after all.

I was packing my daughter’s lunch before work when the silver locket slipped free from beneath my T-shirt and tapped against the kitchen counter. I caught it without thinking. The chain was old, the clasp barely held anymore, but I’d worn it every day for as long as I could remember.

Lily padded out in mismatched socks, hair a wild halo.

“Mom, can I have the crust cut off today?”

“That’s ’cause I meant it last week too.”

I smiled and sliced the crust, sliding the plate toward her. She climbed onto the stool and studied me the way only a nine-year-old can, like I was a puzzle with two pieces missing.

“Sorry,” I said automatically when I bumped her juice glass with my elbow, even though nothing spilled. Lily just smiled.

“Mom, you say sorry even when nobody’s mad.”

I smiled, but I didn’t answer.

“Mm?”

“What was your mommy’s name?”

“I’ve told you, Lily. My papers said UNKNOWN.”

“But she had a name.”

Lily chewed slowly, then reached out and tapped the locket with a syrupy finger.

“Maybe her name’s inside there.”

“Maybe.”

I’d tried to open it a hundred times as a kid. It never gave.

After she ran off to brush her teeth, I pulled a shoebox from the top shelf. Inside were old client cards held together with a rubber band. Thursdays: Eleanor’s house. Vanilla candles, marble floors that hurt my knees, and a glass of iced tea she always left waiting for me.

I hadn’t cleaned there in three years, not since her husband Arthur died and the house was sold. Nice people. Distant world.

I put the cards away.

Outside, gravel crunched. Louder than the mail truck. Wrong sound entirely.

I peeked through the blinds, and my stomach tightened. A black limousine, long and out of place, was rolling to a stop beside my rusting sedan.

“Lily, stay inside a minute, okay?”

“I don’t know yet.”

I wiped my palms on my jeans and stepped onto the sagging porch. The driver opened the back door, and Eleanor stepped out in a soft cream coat, an envelope pressed to her chest.

She smiled like she’d been rehearsing it the whole drive.

“Maya. I hope you’ll forgive me for coming without calling. I’ve been trying to find you for months.”

And just like that, the ordinary morning I thought I knew ended.

Eleanor stepped closer, clutching a cream envelope against her coat. She smelled like the same expensive perfume I remembered from Thursday mornings in her marble foyer.

“I started a foundation in Arthur’s name. I’m inviting everyone who worked for us over the years.” She smiled sadly. “You were harder to find than anyone else. My assistant spent months tracking you down.”

“Arthur always remembered how kind you were to our home. I wanted to invite you in person.”

Lily’s pink bicycle lay tipped over in the grass behind me. I bent to lift it, and the chain of the locket slipped free of my collar and swung against my shirt.

Eleanor stopped speaking mid-sentence.

I straightened slowly. Her face had drained of color.

“This?” I touched it without thinking. “I’ve had it since I was a baby. The social worker who placed me said it was found with me.”

Eleanor stared at me for a long moment before fumbling for her phone.

She scrolled through her photos in silence. Finally, she found what she was looking for and held the screen out to me.

A young woman stood on a garden path, holding a little girl no more than three on her hip. Around the woman’s neck hung a silver locket. It wasn’t just similar. It had the same worn clasp and the same tiny dent beside the hinge.

The yard tilted slightly under me.

“Who is she?”

Eleanor’s voice barely made it past her lips.