For a moment, all I could do was stare at that photograph. I hadn’t expected to see Claire’s face on a stranger’s doorstep, much less beside a woman wearing that ring.
Ellie’s mother.
I took the chain off.
“Where did you get this?”
“That’s our mother, Eleanor. And that’s my sister Claire.”
“Claire never had a brother.”
“She never told you?”
“She said she didn’t talk to her father. That’s all.”
“She never told you?”
“Her father is my father.”
“And the woman at Walmart?”
“My other sister, Meredith.”
“Why was she crying over a ring?”
“It was our mother’s. Mom wanted Claire’s first child to have it.”
“Then why didn’t Claire’s child get it?”
It was Claire, my daughter-in-law.
“Dad wouldn’t give it up. He cut Claire off nine years ago.”
This whole story seemed unreal to me.
