I raised my niece on my own — eight years later, she pointed at a woman in the next beach changing cubicle and whispered, “Aunty, look… she has my mark”

yet. She rode up with me because I didn’t want to drive alone with a baby. She was asleep in the back room.”

My stomach dropped.

“I went back,” Joan said. “I thought I could wake her. I remember smoke. Heat. Then waking up somewhere white with people standing over me. My purse had burned. I had no ID. By the time I could say my own name, you’d already continue reading …