Sylvia didn’t used to be this way. She had once — most of her life, in fact — been steadfastly positive. She was privileged, she would say humbly, and so she felt it was her mission to try to make the world a better place. She was so privileged she actually believed she would make the world a better place.

When Sylvia first found out I was one of the Lao Babies, she was ecstatic, as though she’d found out she were one of them. Reporters sought her out and she gave intense, glowing interviews. I always knew she was special, from the day I saw her, she would beam at me. I had always wanted to adopt a little Chinese girl, of course, because I wanted to be able to take her from a culture that to this day refuses to value women and show her that she is valuable and important. I wanted to show this to her from day one, in the very act of being a single mother.

The reporters nodded, faces and fingers twitching impatiently: get to the point, will you, lady? this article’s for the science section, not op-eds or inspirational.

A reminiscing laugh, a fond gaze. I knew something was wrong when she reached her twenties and still hadn’t gotten her period, but Dr. Grimaldi — she’s the best gyno in New York, you know — she was the one who first suggested the Lao Baby possibility, and then of course I starting putting the pieces of the puzzle together. I writhed and winced through every one of these sessions. I couldn’t believe she was discussing my period with reporters. She would have shown them evidence if they’d asked.

Later on, though, when the interviews trailed off and the few there were ended up mostly for me and not her, she became sullen. It wasn’t just the interviews, though. After I stopped giving interviews and went incognito, her sullenness expanded into full-blown bitterness. She resented it, this thing that I had that she hadn’t, this thing that made me special that I hadn’t done anything to achieve. I was privileged, in a way that completely outstripped any possible advantage she might have been accused of enjoying. When her health, and then separately her mind, started to go, it went beyond resentment. It became pure hatred, the desperate, poisonous hatred of someone who wants to spoil things for those with something to lose. It was too dangerous for me to visit often — people might remember her from the interviews and figure out who I was — but she still managed to make me feel guilty about it. Nice of you to stop by, angel, she’d snarled the last time I came around to see her at the hospital.

This time Jimmy was with me. I figured Sylvia always liked an audience, and baby-faced Jimmy might be a good one. “He’s a friend,” I said to Sylvia. To replace the dead one, I anticipated her saying — she’d heard about Maggie on the news. You’ll be doing a lot of that in your lifetime, won’t you. You’ll bury us all!, the last a sarcastic shriek. Instead she merely gave him a scowl of indifference. She must have been feeling better, a potage of new-and-improved drugs for lunch.

Jimmy nodded agreeably at her. “Hey, Mrs. Lowe.” He even waved, as though she were his high school English teacher. For his sake I tried to look like I was trying not to laugh, though in truth I was trying not to flinch, waiting for the onslaught.

“It’s Ms. I never married. Never. I had to raise her all by myself. No one was there to help me.” Her eyes razor-edge narrow.

“Yeah, uh, your daughter’s told me a lot about your amazing life.” I had told him a few things, but I don’t recall using the word “amazing” unless it slipped in there sarcastically.

“Has she. Well, young man, it’s true. I’ve lived a good life, a full life. An amazing life. And right now I’d trade it for an empty, worthless one if I could, if it meant my health back, if it meant myself back, if I had more time.”

Jimmy edged away. Well, I’d warned him.

So she turned to me, and started it all over again. “Why you? Why you and not me?”

“Sylvia.” I choked the syllables. “Don’t do this again.”

“Oh? Why not do this again? If not now then never. Never again.”

I played on the one thing that usually gave her the most self-righteous zeal: “What about all the good deeds you’ve done? Surely that makes it worthwhile.”

She opened her mouth cavernously, but instead of a scream — a squeak, a last bit of air escaping from a balloon. “It doesn’t! It doesn’t!”

Then she went back into her snarl. “But you’ll get yours. They’ll reproduce that Lao research, improve it, perfect it. Of course it’ll only be the rich at first. Whoever patents the thing will charge a mint, never mind ethics. The rich will become immortal before the poor get a decent bite to eat.”

That sounded more like the old Sylvia, and I turned to look at the window to hide a real smile: Sylvia, railing against the wealthy, never mind her own status as lifelong trust fund baby.

She went on, though. “By the time you’re old, people will be living twice as long as you. Then see how you feel. Like that soldier, the one who gets killed only two days before the war ends. Can you imagine it? Lying in a field bleeding to death knowing that if you’d just held on two days you could go on for decades more. Instead you’ll be rotting away within weeks when everyone else is celebrating. Going home heroes. Settling back in. And you’re dead. You’re dead. Your body’s rotten. Your brain’s wormy. You’re gone, for the next ten years, the next hundred, forever.”

I wanted to tell her to stop. I couldn’t, though, because we both knew she would stop soon enough. I had to let her make the words come out into the room, while she could still make something in the world before it made her into nothing.

A look from Jimmy made me realize we needed to get to the point and get out of there. “Sylvia. The woman you contacted when you adopted me. Do you remember her at all?”

“Of course I remember her,” she snapped. “Ruth Baxter. An English woman. Lives in Canada now. We kept in touch for a while. I still have her address and I doubt she’s moved.”

It took all the energy I could muster to keep my jaw from dropping the way Jimmy’s did. It had been just that simple, we had gotten our reward — once we had gotten through Sylvia’s verbal hoops of fire.

Ruth Baxter. The one person who might know where Lindstrom was. The woman who did know where all the Lao Babies went. The woman who gave us all away. Now we knew where to find her.