“Mother,” Rosalind whispered, and the word landed on me like thunder. The woman in white gloves crossed the yard on unsteady legs and took my wife’s face in both hands as though touching something she had mourned as lost. My son peered from behind my leg. My daughter clutched her mother’s skirt. The men in dark suits stood silent, hands folded, waiting. I understood nothing except that the fragile woman I had found begging in the market was not who the village believed her to be.

Rosalind turned to me, tears streaming, and for the first time in all our years together she looked afraid of the truth rather than ashamed of her poverty. “There’s something I never told you,” she said, her voice breaking. “Something I ran from. Something I thought would follow me forever if anyone ever learned my real name.” The older woman drew a folded document from her coat and held it out toward me with trembling gloved fingers, and I saw an official seal glinting in the morning sun.