Tess bought an old narrow house with a blue door. Under a loose board in the attic she found a tin containing a brown photograph of eleven people on her own front steps: men in hats, women, a baby, a dog. On the back, in pencil: "Twelve of us. Find the twelfth." She counted again and again, and always came to eleven.
The neighbors knew nothing. Then 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 pale face, and a hand pressed against 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 when she was fourteen. Tess wrote to the only address he had. A month went by without an answer. Then, one Saturday morning, an old woman of nearly eighty stood on the pavement, looking up at the house. It was Maud. She climbed to the attic and touched the letters with one finger, 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," said Tess.
