She went to the kitchen and began taking things out for lunch, her hands moving through their familiar routine: pot on the stove, water on to heat, vegetables on the board.
Her birth certificate.
She kept it in an envelope in the small drawer of her bedside table with her other important documents. She knew exactly what it said. She had read it many times over the years, not because she needed to, but because it was 1 of the few official records of her mother’s existence that she had, 1 of the few places where her mother’s full name appeared in clean formal print.
Mother: Victoria Lawson. Father: unknown.
She stood at the kitchen counter and stared at the pot of water coming slowly to the boil.
Unknown.
That was the word that had sat in that small box on the form all her life, a box her mother had left empty. Whether out of bitterness or protection or simple resignation, Rebecca had never been entirely sure.
Unknown.
She picked up the knife and began cutting the vegetables. Her face was calm. Her hands were steady. But something was moving in her, something quiet and underground, the way water moves beneath a dry field long before it ever breaks the surface.