"Get comfortable. This will take some time," I said.

But she'd already brought in a throw cushion from the living room and tucked it between her back and the chair.

She maintained slow-paced but intense interest in those letters and I asked her to speed up more than once. This wasn't story time at the library, though some of those letters did read like Shakespearean tragedies. Adoption is usually a wonderful thing and some of my cases have produced reunions that turned out to be dreams come true. But not everyone gets what they expect when they search for secrets in their past.

In the three hours that followed, Aunt Caroline and

I compared that small sample of handwriting over and over. I kept glancing her way wondering if this task was making her fatigued. Her doctored skin held up, but her shoulders slumped and she had to use lens solution several times. Plus she drank enough water to float the battleship Texas and that meant a hundred trips to the bathroom.

"This seems like an exercise in futility," I finally said. I was getting even more worried about her. We were almost done and Jeff and I could finish this tonight after Doris went to bed. Yes, there was a much-anticipated sleepover planned. Besides, I didn't want Aunt Caroline asking me when I would need to start "cooking" for the expected company.

"We're not quitting now, Abigail. It's only four o'clock. We can get the rest done in the next hour."

"But—"

"I have twelve letters in my 'maybe pile.' How many in yours?" she said.

"Only six."

"Let's plow through the rest and then revisit those remaining letters," she said.

There was no arguing with Aunt Caroline—not ever. But even I was getting tired. "How about chocolate to get us through this, then?"

She tilted her head and squirted more lens solution in her eyes. "Chocolate sounds wonderful."