Mason went completely rigid in my arms. He did not cry this time. Instead, he looked toward the front door, his eyes wide and searching, as if he expected someone to walk through it. Then, he leaned close, pressing his warm little mouth right against my ear.

“Because she comes to my window,” he whispered.

I held my breath, trying to keep my body from trembling so I would not frighten him. “Who comes to your window, sweetie?”

“The lady in the picture,” he said, his voice so quiet I could barely hear it over the hum of the refrigerator. “She knocks on the glass really soft. She says she is my real grandma, and Mommy stole me.”

A strange, heavy silence settled over the room. I felt a sudden, deep chill that had nothing to do with the draft under the door. I looked down at his small hands, which were twisting the sleeve of his pajamas.

“Mason,” I said, keeping my voice steady and light, the way you do when you are trying to keep a child from panicking. “When did the lady come to your window?”

“At the new house,” he said. “The one with the blue door. She gave me a little piece of strawberry candy. She told me it was our secret.”

The house with the blue door was a small rental cottage my daughter, Jessie, had moved into just six weeks ago. It sat on a quiet, wooded lane about three miles from my place.

I sat there in the quiet living room, holding my grandson tightly against my chest while my mind raced. Carol had been gone for six years. She was resting in the quiet cemetery on the hill, and there was no way she could be standing outside a window in the dark.

But as I stared at the silver frame in my hand, a memory I had spent two decades trying to bury came rushing back. Carol was not an only child, and neither was I.

We had another sister. Clara.

Clara and Carol were identical twins. When they were young, you could barely tell them apart unless you looked closely at the tiny mole near Clara’s left temple. But while Carol was gentle and settled down close to home, Clara was restless, bitter, and angry at the world.

Twenty years ago, after a terrible family dispute over our parents’ estate, Clara walked out of our lives. She said some unforgivable things to Jessie, who was just a teenager at the time, and she vowed she would make us all pay for turning our backs on her. We heard rumors she had moved out west, and eventually, we stopped looking for her. We stopped speaking her name.

I picked up my phone with a hand that would not stop shaking. I called Jessie, and the moment she answered, my voice sounded thin and fragile. “Jessie, I need you to come home right now.”