Ive always felt like I didnt belong here, you know? Even as a kid, Id get these odd flashes an old cottage smelling of smoke and fresh apples, a darkhaired woman humming a lullaby, a man whod toss me up against the ceiling and laugh until the windows rattled. Mum, Margaret, would just say it was my imagination, but those memories kept getting stronger.
It didnt help that Mums bright red hair and blue eyes had nothing in common with mine I was darkhaired, browneyed. And we never talked about Dad at all.
When Mum fell ill with cancer, she whispered to me just before she passed: I stole you, love. Id been travelling as a tourist when an earthquake hit. In the wreckage I found a tiny girl in a spotted dress the only living thing among the dead. I had no children, so I took her in and raised her. I gave you back a past, but I left you a name. Your mother was Eleanor, your father was Thomas.
I didnt buy it until I saw a yellowed photograph of a man and woman whose faces were hauntingly familiar. It left a hollow that made me keep digging.
Half a world away, old Thomas Thompson was fighting his own illness. He hid blood in his handkerchief from his ward, Harold. Hed promised his wife Lydia that hed wait if their lost daughter Poppy ever came back. Lydia, who once trusted cards and omens, died convinced their girl was still out there. Thomas carried the weight of guilt and a sliver of hope.
Harold kept urging him to get treatment, but Thomas refused. Instead he told Harold he should find a new love and forget the missing fiancée. Both men were bound by the same grief Harold had lost his father in the very quake that took Thomass child.
I decided then. I bought a ticket and flew back to my hometown, York. All I had in my pocket was an address and that old photograph. In the cab, the driver went pale the moment he saw the picture, nearly crashing.
What’s your name, love? he asked, voice trembling.
Emma, I said.
No, he sighed. Your real name is Poppy.
I froze. Coincidence or fate?
Meanwhile, Thomas sensed his final night was near. He hoped to drift off as peacefully as Lydia had. But he woke up the next morning weak, broken, yet still waiting. He heard a car outside and footsteps down the hallway.
Uncle George, its me! shouted Harold, adding, Im not alone! Thomas thought the doctor had arrived.
But then a young woman stepped in. Not Lydia though at first he thought she might be. It was his daughter. His Poppy, grown up, with the same dark eyes.
I I mean, Poppy sat on the edge of the bed, hesitantly brushed his hand. Tears of joy rolled down Thomass cheeks as he stroked my cheek.
Girl, he whispered, youre finally home.
For a heartbeat the world seemed to stand still. The promise hed made all those years ago was finally kept.
