I sat on the couch and read the letter while Hannah cried beside me. Seventeen years earlier, she had given birth to a baby girl at nineteen, alone and terrified, and placed her for adoption in a closed arrangement. The bracelet and socks were all she had kept. For years she never said a word, not even to me. Then, three months ago, a letter arrived from a young woman named Grace, who had found her through a registry and asked to meet.

The man in the navy jacket was Grace’s adoptive father, Mr. Peters. Hannah had told him she would bring a gift for Grace’s upcoming eighteenth birthday, and the cash was her savings from seventeen years of quiet work, meant for Grace’s college fund. She had been so nervous that morning that she had packed the sack of money and mementos in the wrong place, then stood in the airport mixing up the bags. She had been planning to ask me to come along for support.

I looked at her and felt no anger, only a deep ache that my best friend had carried this alone for so long. Mr. Peters explained that Grace knew everything and had been waiting patiently, hoping for a chance to meet her birth mother. He said he was grateful, not suspicious, and that the bag mix-up had only made the story one they would tell for years. Hannah wiped her face and laughed through her tears.

The next Saturday, the three of us drove to a small café where Grace was waiting with a bouquet of daisies. She and Hannah hugged for a long time while Mr. Peters and I quietly stepped outside. Today Grace calls Hannah every Sunday, and I get a seat at every birthday dinner. Our suitcases now have bright yellow ribbons on the handles, so we never mix them up again.