Melody Delgado

WHEN YOU WISH UPON A FAIRY

WHEN YOU WISH UPON A FAIRY Ireland, 1853 I wiped salty tears from my eyes, using an old, embroidered handkerchief that had been my mother’s. I sat on my lumpy iron bed examining the letters — MR, which stood for Maura Reilly — that had been clumsily sewn into the cloth. It was one of the few remaining items belonging to my parents that had been given to me after they’d died during the potato famine, and I’d come here to live in the orphanage when I was twelve.