I raised Ruth after losing my sister, Joan, and built our whole life around the truth I thought I knew. One afternoon at the beach, eight years later, Ruth noticed something impossible in the next changing cubicle, and I had to chase down the answer I was terrified to find.
The woman in the next beach changing cubicle had my niece’s birthmark.
It was not one like it.
It was the same one.
It was a small butterfly shape on the outside of her calf.
Ruth saw it first.
It was the same one.
I was helping her tug a clean T-shirt over her damp hair when she stopped moving so suddenly that the shirt got stuck over her nose.
“Aunty Jess,” she whispered.
“What, baby?”
She pointed through the narrow gap beneath the divider. Only the woman’s legs were visible.
“Look.”
“Aunty Jess.”
Then the woman shifted her towel, and I saw the mark.
My hands went cold.
Ruth pulled the shirt down herself and looked up at me.
“She has my butterfly mark, Aunty Jess.”
I saw the mark.
***
For a moment, I couldn’t hear the ocean anymore.
I knew only one other person who had that exact birthmark.
My sister, Joan.
The sister I’d buried eight years earlier.
The sister whose daughter I’d raised from the time Ruth was one.
My sister, Joan.
***
The woman in the next cubicle grabbed her beach bag and stepped out fast.
I shoved our curtain aside before I had both sandals on.
“Stay with Andy,” I told Ruth.
My boyfriend would keep her safe until I figured out what was happening.
“But Aunty Jess…”
“Stay with Andy.”
“Ruthie, now. Please.”
My voice came out sharper than I meant it to, but I was already moving.
What happened next changed everything… FULL STORY on the next page.
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