Claire didn’t ask what was funny.
“She cheated,” I said.
“Oh, constantly.”
“She skipped ahead.”
“Also constantly.”
“I hated that.”
“She knew.”
I glanced over at Claire.
She smiled, but the smile wasn’t really for me.
It belonged to someone who wasn’t there anymore.
I hated how much that hurt.
“Was she sick?” I asked.
Claire looked briefly toward the doorway before answering.
“Yes.”
There it was.
The truth she’d apparently been carrying toward me for the past six months.
“How sick?”
“She had a chronic condition from childhood. That summer was one of the better stretches.”
“So she came here?”
“Every week she could.”
Claire came closer but stopped on the opposite side of the table.
“She hated people asking about her health before they asked her name.”
I looked at the empty chair beside me.
“I didn’t know.”
“That was why she liked you.”
I gave Claire a sharp look.
“Don’t turn me into some saintly eight-year-old.”
Claire almost smiled.
“You weren’t. You made her cry once because you said she cheated at Uno.”
“Did she?”
“Absolutely.”
Despite everything, I laughed.
It lasted maybe two seconds.
Then the question I’d been avoiding came back.
“What happened to her?”
Claire pulled out the chair across from me.
“Can I sit?”
I nodded.
She sat down.
“Near the end of that summer, our mom took Nora out of town for specialized treatment. Everybody thought she’d be gone a few weeks.”
My fingers found a scratch carved into the surface of the table.
“And?”
“She got worse.”
My thumb stopped moving over the scratch.
Claire continued quietly.
“She died that winter.”
I stared toward the shelves.
Somewhere behind us, a child laughed.
Neither of us spoke for a while.
Then I asked, “Nobody told me?”
“No.”
“But you knew I existed.”
“Yes.”
“You knew who I was when you saw me on Tinder.”
“Yes.”
“So why then?”
Claire looked down at her hands.
“Because I thought I’d finally been given a chance to tell you.”
I waited.
“I didn’t know your last name for years,” she continued. “I knew Ethan. I knew your mom used to pick you up in a red car. I knew you moved not long after Nora got sick. By the time I thought seriously about finding you, I had almost nothing useful.”
“But eventually you did.”
