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.
No neighbor knew. Mr. Hale, who was eighty-four and lived at number nine, looked at it for a long time. "These are the Rowes," he said. "There were twelve children. Little Maud always hid when a camera came out. She was too shy."
Tess studied the photo with a magnifying glass. In the upstairs window above the door there was a small face, and a hand on the glass. She climbed to the attic and found the same window, and on the sill, scratched under the paint, the letters M.R.
Mr. Hale said that Maud had moved far away at fourteen. Tess wrote to the only address he had. A month went by. Then, one Saturday morning, an old woman nearly eighty stood on the pavement, looking up at the house. It was Maud. She climbed to the attic and touched the letters, and Mr. Hale, who had once thrown pebbles at that window, could hardly speak.
Tess took a new photo on the steps: herself, Mr. Hale and nine neighbors, eleven in all. In the upstairs window stood Maud, not hiding this time but waving and laughing. "Twelve of us."
