An invisible red thread connects those who are destined to meet, regardless of time, place or circumstance. The thread may stretch or tangle, but it will never break. An ancient Chinese belief.

When the evening call came in the third month of the first year of the new century, I thought back to the previous week, marveling at premonitions and the unrealized gifts still awaiting discovery. I had been thinking about what Nana had told me following Mama's death after Carol and I were living with the Sisters of Charity at Maryvale, the former Los Angeles orphanage. Over the years, except for that first impression, the story had fled like a grayed-out dream. Futile attempts at recapturing the filmy fragments left me grabbing at stray wisps of thought.

Nana often picked us up from Maryvale to spend the weekend with her and Uncle Andy. It was her way of attempting a degree of family life. They lived in a small trailer in Pico Rivera -- barely large enough to accommodate them and their snarly dog, Skippy -- which made for a crowded weekend. So, she often took us to her daughter’s home in Rosemead.

The women of my mother's family were a rancorous lot. During those visits a large part of the conversation centered on family stories that happened before our births. The family we would never know; pale, silent ghosts gone like our mother, their photos familiar strangers from the past.

One morning, I could see Nana and Betty circling, ready to go at it hammer and tongs. As I got up from the kitchen banquette seat, Nana focused on me and, out of nowhere, said, "Your mother had another child."

The air was suddenly unbreathable as the words hit with a blinding flash. Finding my voice, I said incredulously, "What? Mama had another child? Again, "Your mother had another child, 15 or so years before your birth." She then related fragments of a story never told before about a child born in California sometime around 1930. No mention of another marriage, though I didn't think to ask. Where was this person?  

Fate winks with news so astounding you are altered forever. Her name was Kim and she was calling from Omaha Catholic Social Services. She was sorry to have called so late but she worked a large caseload and her client had been searching for a long time. "You have a brother looking for you, and he has been searching for his mother or her family for over 25 years." 

In our first conversation, I could hear in Don's voice this was a high-wire act and he wasn't sure whether he would make it across to the other side without a fatal fall, knocking his last hope out of him. Adopted children searching for birth parents are courageous souls willing themselves beyond their current horizons, no less brave than explorers setting their sites on uncharted territories. He had been looking for a place and purpose all his life; never quite fitting in, feeling as if he didn't belong anywhere or to anyone. And I acted as his Sybil, the oracle for whom he had searched. He would learn about his mother through me and, eventually, through our sister, Carol. He would know her through my eyes, my feelings, my stories and then with his own intuition flesh out her shadow side and the psychological wasteland of her tragically blighted life.

We learned that at different times we had both lived in North Platte, NE, the connection startling me. Then he said, "I knew your dad. I met him in 1955 when he was an engineer with Platte Valley Power and Irrigation. A bunch of us used to meet at Tucker's every day for lunch." Tingles went up my spine. Neither could have known there was a common denominator between them (Don's records sealed at birth), that the woman who mystified my father and the one he never forgot was the same woman who was Don's and my mother, Valeska Glenn. They were not related in any way except by an unseen intervention. 

Don then spoke of his broken first marriage and a daughter reared in North Platte under a different surname. Continuing his story, I interrupted and asked what surname his daughter took after her mother remarried. "Feeken," he replied. And then the bullet. "Her name is Kathy. Kathy Feeken." No. It couldn't be...The name resonated and her familiar face floated up in front of me. I rose unsteadily to my feet, thoughts moving faster than my tongue.

As the words stumbled up my throat, I repeated in an astonished voice, "Kathy Feeken?" "Kathy Feeken is your daughter?" "Kathy Feeken is my niece?" Kathy's sky-blue eyes perfectly matched to my mother's, set above the same high, round cheekbones and wide embracing smile. And then the bullet ricocheted as I said, "I've known Kathy Feeken for thirty years."  

During her life the geography of my mother's years became an illegible map of trails leading to dead ends. Ultimately, it would take a lifetime to unravel the clever skein she had woven around her history and the Sphinx-like life she led. The key -- my Rosetta stone -- that finally deciphered my mother's concealed past lay under my fingertips for over 40 years in the innocuous form of a scrapbook entitled, "The Girl Graduate's Record Book." Through it Don's father was revealed, as were other revelations.   

A poem written in my 20s describes my life as a patchwork quilt, scraps sewn together at different times, never completely finished. We are all unfinished pieces. We fall down, knees bloodied from life's scrapes. We get up and try again. Sometimes, out of nowhere, a higher power recognizes our struggles, is touched by our strengths and gives back two-fold what was taken at great price. That was my feeling the night my brother entered our lives. Participants in a metaphysical drama, he and I were waiting in the wings for our entrance into one another's life.