***
I searched the toolbox again.
Beneath a tray of screws, I found a black address book with a cracked spine.
We brought home a premature baby girl.
Most of the numbers had been crossed out, but one name remained clear.
Rose.
My thumb hovered over the phone number.
Then I used our landline to call.
The line rang five times.
I found a black address book.
“Hello?” a woman answered.
Her voice was older and cautious.
Silence stretched between us.
“Richard?” she whispered, recognizing our landline. “Is that really you?”
I gripped the tangled plastic coil of the receiver.
“This isn’t Richard. It’s his wife.”
“Is that really you?”
A cup touched a hard surface on her end of the line. Then she began to cry.
“You finally found me,” she said. “I thought this day would never come.”
“Who are you?”
Rose did not answer.
Her breathing slowed.
“I can’t tell you over the phone.”
“Who are you?”
“You can tell me right now.”
“No.” Her voice remained gentle. “Some truths should not arrive without a face attached to them.”
She gave me the address of a diner in the next town.
I took the photograph and drove away before Richard came home. My hands shook so badly that I missed the turn twice.
“You can tell me right now.”
***
Rose was already sitting in the last booth.
Her hair had gone silver, chafar but I recognized her immediately.
She held a coffee cup between both hands.
“You’re Evelyn,” she said.
“And you’re the woman on my husband’s chest.”
Her fingers stopped moving.
“You’re Evelyn.”
I placed the photograph between us.
