Seven thousand miles was a long way to go for a tiny scrap of paper. The note was pinned to my daughter’s sweater when she was found at seven weeks old on a bridge in Yixing, China. That’s what I had been told by the adoption coordinator there who had placed her in my arms.

This search was set in motion 15 years ago when, at 3, Sophie was astonished to learn from me that all babies don’t come from China but from inside their mothers. When I explained that another woman had given birth to her, not me, she protested.

I could not bring myself to utter the well-meaning evasion that she was “born in my heart,” as had many adoptive mothers I knew. But it didn’t matter what I said; her world had been upended and she kept trying to right it.

At 4, she said, “Mommy, I always think: How was I made? What was I made from? Was I made from someone?”