“What is this?”
Rose looked down at it. Her shoulders dropped, aching with the sudden lightness.
Before she could answer, the bell above the diner door rang.
Richard walked in.
Her shoulders dropped.
He saw me first.
Then he saw Rose.
His face went white.
He did not look like a man caught with a lover. He looked like a man who had arrived at the end of a promise.
Rose stood halfway, then sat again.
“I called him,” she told me. Then she turned to him. “Did you keep it?”
Richard removed his coat but did not join us.
“Every day.”
“Did you keep it?”
He reached into his wallet and pulled out a folded square of paper. The creases had worn nearly transparent. He placed it beside the photograph.
Rose did not touch it.
I opened the note.
“Promise me she’ll always grow up believing she was wanted. Never make her feel like someone gave her away.”
I read it again.
Rose did not touch it.
Then I looked at Richard.
“Who is ‘she’?”
He slid into the booth beside me, leaving a few inches of space between us.
Neither of them spoke.
The waitress approached with a coffeepot, glanced at our table, and quietly turned around.
“Richard?”
Neither of them spoke.
His eyes remained on the note.
“Claire,” he replied.
The name landed softly, but everything inside me shifted.
Rose turned her cup in small circles.
I looked from her to Richard. “Is Claire your daughter?”
“No.”
The answer came quickly.
“Is Claire your daughter?”
“Is she Rose’s daughter?”
Rose looked toward the window.
