The Weight She Finally Set Down

For twenty-three years, Maria Gutierrez carried a sealed envelope in the bottom of her jewelry box. Inside was a letter from her birth mother — the one her adoptive parents had given her at eighteen with trembling hands. She never opened it. She was afraid of what it might say. Afraid she had been unwanted. Afraid the truth would confirm the story she had already written in her own mind: that she was someone worth giving away.…