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J ulia headed down the hall to the ladies’ room while Courtney went to the cafeteria to get a coffee. She wanted to wash her face, and her head pounded after the vision of Gianluca being forced off the road. She didn’t know what to do next. She certainly couldn’t go to the police.

She reached the middle of the hallway and passed a line of children’s drawings hanging on the wall.

They had to be from an elementary school and they were crayoned pictures of smiling kids in white coats, stethoscopes, and scrubs.

There were twenty or so, with Italian captions that the drawings helped her translate:

Voglio diventare la dottoressa. I want to be a doctor.

Voglio diventare un infirmiere. I want to be a nurse.

Voglio diventare un tecnico radiologo. I want to be an X-ray technician.

Julia glanced at the last drawing and stopped in her tracks, stunned. The drawing was of a woman who looked like her , only older. It wasn’t a child’s drawing, but a portrait done by an adult with art talent, compelling even in crayons.

What? Julia couldn’t believe what she was seeing. The resemblance was uncanny. The woman’s eyes were the most like her own, blue and wide-set, though the woman’s in the picture had crow’s-feet. Her nose was short like Julia’s, and her mouth wider, but their smiles were a lot alike.

Oh my God. Julia felt like she was looking at her biological mother . The woman seemed to be in her fifties, which could be the age of her biological mother. The drawing had a caption, which read, Adoro essere un maestra , I adore being a teacher.

Julia reeled. On impulse, she touched the picture. A tingling electrified her fingertips. She didn’t pull away. She felt the connection. She wanted the connection.

Tears sprang to her eyes, of recognition, of validation, of sheer joy. The teacher had to be her birth mother. She removed her hand, and the tingling faded away.

Her thoughts raced. Her biological mother had been here with her class. Therefore, she had to live somewhere nearby.

Julia looked around for something to identify which school the children were from. There wasn’t anything. The children had scrawled their names at the bottom of their drawings; Paolo, Dmitri, Elianna, and Francesco M. The teacher hadn’t written her name.

Julia had to find her. She took off down the hallway and hurried to the information desk, which was staffed by an older woman. “Excuse me, those pictures, do you know what school the kids were from?”

“We have a lot of pictures here. Which one?”

“The ones on the way to the cafeteria. They were drawn by children. It’s from a class.”

“I bring my food. The cafeteria’s too expensive.”

“May I show you? Maybe you’ll know?”

“No, I can’t leave the desk.”

Julia tried another tack. “Do you know the elementary schools in the area?”

“No. Call the office during the day. You can ask them. They will know.”

“Thank you.” Julia left the desk and hurried back down the hallway. She was already getting another idea. She wanted to take photographs of the drawing. It was as good as any police composite, and it could help her find her biological mother.

Julia hustled down the hallway, but stopped, shocked.

The wall was completely white. The drawings were gone, all of them.

What? Julia whirled around. The pictures had been right here.

Julia realized she could be in the wrong hallway.

She tried to reorient herself, double-checking.

The cafeteria was to the left, and the information desk was to the right.

She was in the correct hallway. The drawings had been on the wall only minutes before, but they had vanished, including the one of her biological mother.

Courtney was walking toward her, holding two coffees.

Julia looked at her, unable to speak.

Courtney stopped, her lips parting. “What’d I miss?”