"We've got to find that photograph," I say.
"We tell Mrs. Nightwing we're searching for a lost glove. She lets us search high and low. We scour the rooms one by one," Ann suggests.
Pippa groans. "It will take us a year."
"Let's each take a floor, shall we?" I say.
Pippa gives me her large doe eyes. "Must we?"
I push her toward the school. "Yes."
After an hour of searching, I still haven't found it. I've paced the third floor so many times, I'm sure I've worn the carpets thin. With a sigh, I stand in front of the existing class photographs, willing them to talk, to tell me something about where I might find what's missing. The ladies do not oblige me. I'm drawn to the photograph from 1872, with its rippled surface. Gently, I remove it from the wall and turn it over. The back of the photograph is smooth, not ruined at all. Turn it back over and there's the wavy front. How can that be? Unless it's not the same photograph at all.
Hurriedly, I tug at the corners of the photograph, as if I'm pulling back a carpet. There is another photograph behind the one in the frame. A buzzing starts in my ears. Eight graduating girls sit grouped on the lawn. In the background is the unmistakable outline of Spence. At the bottom, in fine print, it reads Class of 1871 . I've found it! Names are written along the bottom in a cramped hand.
Left to right Millicent Jenkins, Susanna Meriwether, Anna Nelson, Sarah Rees-Toome
My head bobs. My finger traces up to Sarah. She turned her head at the moment the picture was snapped, leaving a blurred profile that's hard to read. I squint but can't really make out much.
My finger moves on to the girl next to her. My mouth goes dry. She's looking directly into the camera with her wise, penetrating eyes I've known my whole life. I look for her name, though I already know the one I'll find, the one she abandoned and left to die in a fire years before I was even born. Mary Dowd.
The girl staring back at me from that class of 1871 is Mary Dowd, my mother.
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
I wait until the others are settled at dinner, then slip away to my room. In the gathering darkness, it fades by degrees. Shapes fade into impressions of things. Everything is stripped down to its essence. I am ready. Eyes closed, I summon the door. The familiar pulsing travels through my veins, and I step through, alone, into the other world, the garden, where sweet- smelling flowers fall around me like ash.