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blood came between them after Mom died and he wouldn’t talk. I’m surprised he even gave me the necklace. There was a letter with it, telling me sweet things like how my mom loved to walk on the beach in the evening.”
    “So that’s where you get it from.”
    “Maybe. I guess she and Mom were really close and she hoped when I looked at the stars over Long Island Sound, I’d think of my mother looking at the stars, and of her too, across the Atlantic. It would be nice to talk to her, but whenever I Google her, I can’t find anything.”
    “Sometimes I wish Taylor had a sister, someone to be close to. If I ever had another baby, they’d be so far apart in age now.”
    “Age doesn’t matter. If you’re in that sister club, nothing can come between you. Not even the Atlantic Ocean. Or time.”
    “I suppose I could have a sister and not even know about it.”
    “What?”
    Eva walks over to the stove and lowers the flame beneath the corn on the cob to a simmer. “Want to know a secret?”
    Maris reaches out her hooked pinkie and catches Eva’s, remembering the time Eva made her Promise, promise, pinkie swear not to tell anyone their first secret, that Theresa and Ned had adopted her. The salt water spun their tubes languidly that long-ago afternoon and when they drifted too far apart, their arms would reach for the other, pulling back close again while imagining the royalty, or celebrities, who might be Eva’s birth family.
    Eva glances out the window at Matt and Kyle setting up the grill for barbecuing. Maris moves beside her and sees Taylor and Lauren busy at the badminton net with Lauren’s kids. “What’s up?” Maris asks quietly.
    Eva looks to Maris then. “Follow me,” she says, leading her to the office in the front room, locking the door behind them and sitting at the desk.
    Maris had snagged another devilled egg off the kitchen table and now watches over Eva’s shoulder while her fingers fly over the keyboard. Lines of text scroll down the computer screen. Finally, Eva pushes her chair back. “There I am.”
    Maris finishes the egg and reads the highlighted lines.
Date of Birth: 2-11-1981
    Springfield, Massachusetts or Hartford, Connecticut
    I was nearly one year old at adoption. Adopted family relocated from Mystic Connecticut to Stony Point Connecticut. I have auburn hair. Eva is searching. Date posted 7-4-2013.
    “You’re looking again?” Maris asks.
    “Just a little, here on this site.”
    “Have you heard anything?”
    Eva shakes her head no. “I only registered a few days ago. Today’s actually the first day it’s posted online.”
    “I thought this got you all stressed and you weren’t going to search anymore.”
    “I wasn’t. It’s kind of because of Taylor that I am. She’s a teenager now and I see so much of myself at that age in her. And that whole mother-daughter recognition, well it makes me wonder about my own mother.”
    “Are you sure about this?”
    “Honestly? What I’m sure of is that the wondering never really goes away, and if I don’t do something about it, it drives me crazy.”
    “What does Matt say?”
    “He doesn’t know yet,” Eva says. “And for now, what he doesn’t know can’t hurt him.”
    “I’m not so sure about that. Little secrets between friends are one thing, but Matt should know. This is big. What if, like, your mother responds?”
    “Then that’s when I’ll tell him.”
    “Oh, I hate surprises.”
    Eva turns back to the screen and Maris recognizes the look, the familiar obsession. Over the years, it rose to the surface in the current of Eva’s life, significant times when she deeply missed her real mother’s presence: Christmases when you want to look up from opening a gift and see your mother’s teary eyes; walking down the aisle in a white gown, seeking a glimpse of your mother’s assuring smile; a quiet summer evening when all that shapes the day is warmth and a lone robin’s song and all you want is to be sitting on a