Tess bought an old narrow house with a blue door. Under a loose board in the attic she found a tin with a brown photograph of eleven people on her front steps: men in hats, women, a baby, a dog. On the back, in pencil: "Twelve of us. Find the twelfth." She counted: eleven.
Mr. Hale, who was eighty-four and lived at number nine, looked at it. "These are the Rowes," he said. "There were twelve children. Little Maud always hid when a camera came out. She was too shy."
Tess looked at the photo with a magnifying glass. In the upstairs window there was a small pale face and a hand on the glass. In the attic she found the same window, and on the sill, scratched under the paint, the letters M.R.
Maud had moved far away at fourteen. Tess wrote to the only address Mr. Hale had. A month later an old woman stood on the pavement, looking up at the house. It was Maud. Tess took a new photo on the steps: eleven people, and in the upstairs window Maud, not hiding this time but waving and laughing.
