My grandmother kept a jar of buttons she would never explain. As a child, I loved tipping them onto the carpet and sorting them by colour. She hated that. “Put them back exactly where you found them.” “Why?” “Because they're memories.” I assumed she meant hers. I didn't understand until she died. Her funeral was small. Afterwards, I returned to her house alone and found the jar on the kitchen table. This time, I noticed something strange. Every button had a tiny initial engraved into it. Except one. A plain white button sat at the bottom. I turned it over. There was a name. Mine. I called my mother. She went silent. Then she said, “Your grandmother told me never to let you see that.” “Why?” “She said you'd understand when you were ready.” I didn't. Not until I found the photograph. It showed my grandmother standing outside a hospital forty years earlier. Beside her was a young woman holding a newborn baby. Me. But my mother wasn't the woman holding me. It was someone else. My grandmother had never been my grandmother. She had been a nurse. My real mother had died during childbirth. The woman in the photograph had adopted me and disappeared shortly afterwards. My entire childhood had been built on a lie. I spent the next year searching for answers. There weren't many. Eventually I stopped looking. Some truths don't repair anything. They simply rearrange the furniture in your mind. I put the white button back. Then I started running. Not because I enjoyed it. Because I needed somewhere to put all the questions. The marathon ended, as these things do, with a quiet cup of tea.