When my name crackled over the intercom the next morning, I braced for a reprimand, not a revelation. The manager’s office felt colder than usual as he handed me a plain white envelope, no explanation, just my name scrawled on the front. It rode against my ribs all shift, a small, insistent weight I didn’t dare open until I sat alone in my car, engine off, world quiet.
Inside, her words unfolded a life I didn’t know I’d been living beside. She thanked me, then wrote of foster homes and files, of a mother she’d never met and a name that kept appearing beside hers: mine. I learned I was the sister she’d been searching for. Meeting her the next day felt like stepping into a room where my past had been waiting. Now, over coffee, laughter, and her baby’s soft breathing, six dollars has become the hinge on which an entire family turned.
