The Coat with Two Names
Chapter 1 - The stitched label
Mara bought the wool coat because its pockets were deep enough for the bakery keys. At home she found two names sewn inside: her father's surname, Bell, and another she did not recognize, Varga. Between the linings lay a bus ticket dated forty years earlier.
Her father had always said he arrived in town with nothing. When she showed him the coat, he folded it carefully and asked where she had bought it. He did not touch the ticket.
The shopkeeper remembered the donor: a retired tailor living above the pharmacy. Mara went there the next afternoon, carrying the coat in a paper bag. The old man opened the door and said, before she introduced herself, "I wondered who would find the repair."
