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”

gap under the divider. Only the woman’s legs were visible.

“Look.”

“Aunty Jess.”

Then the woman shifted her towel, and I saw the mark.

My hands went cold.

Ruth tugged the shirt down herself and looked up at me.

“She has my butterfly mark, Aunty Jess.”

I saw the mark.

For a moment, the sound of the ocean disappeared entirely.

I knew only one other person who continue reading …