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Cape Cod with her gloved hands, which made a muffled whump-whump .
    A short, attractive woman with mousy hair came to the door. She was about forty and wore a light blue angora sweater and faded jeans. “You must be Gloria. Come in. I’m Mary.”
    Gloria stepped inside and Mary took her coat. The house was nice. Cozy. Not ostentatious bu t not run-down either. It seemed a lot bigger from the inside and smelled like sugar cookies.
    “George, Gloria’s here. Come on.”
    A tired engineer type walked out. Tall and thin with glasses. Curly brown hair. “Thank you for coming all the way out here. We just wanted to meet you. Wanted to see if Alison, well, you know.”
    Gloria shook her head. “If she what?” She asked.
    “Oh, there’s plenty of time for that,” Mary said. “Come into the living room.”
    Mary ushered Gloria to a big plaid couch by a roaring wood stove. A Springer Spaniel jumped up and nestled next to her. The dog helped her to relax.
    He seemed to say, “Don’t worry. We’re all friends here.” She petted his speckled fur and he moaned with content.
    The couple sat across from her in a love seat, studying her. “I’ve put coffee on,” Mary said. “It’s not quite ready yet. And here are some cookies. Ali and I made them just for you.” She pushed the plate toward Gloria.
    “You and Ali have the same nose,” George said.
    “We do?” Gloria took a cookie and held it to her mouth, just ready to bite. She wasn’t hungry but didn’t want to appear impolite.
    “Sure do,” Mary said. “When we adopted Alison we promised ourselves we’d never try to find the birth parents or even—”
    Gloria dropped her cookie on her lap and the dog caught it before it bounced to the floor. Crumbs littered Gloria’s slacks.
    “Snooker, stop it,” Mary commanded. But the dog kept chewing, and then pawed at Gloria’s leg for more.
    She pushed him away. “When you adopted her?” Gloria felt her throat constrict. Snooker pawed her leg again, so she picked up another cookie from the plate and tossed it across the room. The dog darted and no one seemed to care. There were bigger issues here.
    “We adopted her from a firm in Miami. New Age Adoption Agency. I thought you knew.”
    Gloria shook her head. “I thought she was yours.”
    Mary folded her arms. “Well, she is ours. Now. She was only two weeks old when we got her. But we were in touch with the agency throughout most of the biological mother’s pregnancy. Poor thing had a terrible time of it and ended up needing months of bed rest and a C-section. It set us back financially for a long time, all those unexpected medical bi lls for the mother—but it was worth it. She’s ours now and we never think of her as anything but.”
    Hairs stood up on Gloria’s neck. “Who was the mother?”
    “Oh, we never met her. A college girl who couldn’t handle the burden of a baby just then. Smart girl from the Midwest. We have her name written down somewhere.”
    “You know it, honey,” George said.
    Mary shot him a look. “No, I’d have to look it up but it doesn’t matter. It’s just that when Doctor Norris said you were such a close match we thought maybe you were an aunt or something and it might be all right for Alison to meet someone who was, well, you know, blood-related. We tried to track down the mother for her marrow but without luck. She really didn’t want to be found. It’s like she never existed.”
    “Mommy?” A beautiful little girl with recently grown tufts of blond hair walked into the room then and Gloria almost fainted. Alison wore a thin surgical mask because her immune system was down, but what Gloria could make out of Allison’s face was the spitting image of Gloria at five-years-old. “Is this my maybe Auntie?”
    Gloria blinked back tears and tried to look anywhere but at the child. Instead she drew her attention to portraits on the wall. Christmas department store poses. Until the chemo, Alison had sported the same thick