She pulled out an envelope, soft and yellow at the edges, the kind that’s been opened and closed a thousand times. Inside was one photograph. Three newborns lined up in those plastic hospital bassinets. Same scrunched little faces. Three of them.

“My mom never showed me this until I was grown,” Robin said. “She told me she only ever brought one baby home. Me. She said the other two were taken away and she was told to never ask questions.”

Two taken away. That’s me and apparently somebody else.

Then Robin turned the photo over, and there was handwriting on the back. Not her mom’s. A nurse’s, she said, blue ballpoint, real neat. And I read it sitting in the passenger seat of a stranger who had my face.

It said the mother had three girls that day. It said the mother couldn’t keep all of them. And then it said something I had to read three times because my eyes wouldn’t hold the words still.

“She kept one. Gave two for adoption. Lord forgive me for the part I played.”

The part she played. The nurse. There was a name written under that, the kind of name you sign when you’re confessing to something. And then, at the very bottom, almost too small to read, the nurse had written the name of the baby the mother chose to keep.

Robin already knew that name, obviously. It was hers. Robin. The kept one.

So our mother had us, all three, and she looked at three faces and she picked one. And then she gave the rest of us to two different families and walked out of a hospital that doesn’t even exist anymore.

I sat in that car and I felt about a hundred things and most of them I’m not proud of.

I was happy I’d found Robin. I was. But there was this other thing crawling up the back of my throat. Three of us. Robin and me made two. So where was the third.

“There were three girls,” I said. “You’re one. I’m one. Who’s the third.”

Robin shook her head. She didn’t know. Her mom died four years ago and took the rest with her. The only thing we had was that photo and that nurse’s name.