I found a photo tucked in the back of my late mother’s old album. There I was at two years old, standing beside a girl who looked exactly like me. On the back, in my mother’s handwriting: “Nadia and Simone, 1978.” I’d never heard of any Simone. Not once in my entire life. Until I knocked on my aunt’s door.

I discovered the photograph by chance. It slipped out from the very back of an album and fell to the floor, face down. When I turned it over, my breath stopped.

There were two little girls in the picture. One was clearly me at two. The other looked about four, standing next to me with the same eyes, the same nose, the same face.

My name is Nadia, and I’m fifty years old. My mother had just passed away at eighty-five. I was alone in her house, going through a lifetime of memories.

It had always been just the two of us. My father died when I was very young. After that, my mother became everything to me—provider, protector, the only steady voice in my world. She worked hard, kept our life simple, and rarely spoke about the past.

After the funeral, I came back to the house by myself. I took a week off work, leaving my husband and kids at home, knowing I’d need quiet days to sort through everything.

I spent three days clearing bedrooms and closets. Every item carried a memory, and every memory reminded me how small our circle had been.

Finally, I climbed into the attic. The ladder groaned, dust floated up, and the single bulb flickered before steadying. That’s where I found the old family albums stacked in a cardboard box.

I carried them downstairs and spread them out on the living room floor. I opened one after another. Page after page showed my childhood—birthdays, school pictures, hazy summer days I’d almost forgotten.