“When I was small.

I used to ask Mum what you looked like.”

“What did she tell you?” I asked.

Claire almost smiled.

It didn’t quite make it.

“She said you had kind eyes.”

I didn’t trust myself to speak for a moment.

“I have photographs,” Anna said quietly.

“From when we were young.

I kept them.

I can get them if — “

“Not yet,” Claire said.

She pressed both hands flat on the table — the same gesture I had made twenty minutes earlier without knowing it.

“I need a minute.”

“Take all the time you need,” I said.

She nodded.

She stared at the table.

Outside, a cloud shifted and the afternoon light came through the kitchen window and fell across the three of us.

Then Claire looked up.

“Did you know my wife?” I said.

“Carol.

Did you ever — “

“No,” Anna said quickly.

“Claire never knew anything about Carol.”

“I want to read the letter,” Claire said.

Anna and I both looked at her.

“The letter you mentioned on the phone,” Claire said.

“The one she wrote.

I want to read it.”

I looked at Anna.

She nodded slightly.

I picked up Carol’s letter from the table and held it out across the space between us.

Claire took it with both hands.

She unfolded it carefully.

She began to read.

I watched her face move through everything Carol had written — the lie at the door, the guilt, the thirty-six years of silence, the final admission.

I watched the moment she reached her own name.

Her breath caught.

Just once.

She finished the letter.

She folded it back along its original creases and set it on the table.

Then she said, very quietly:

“She knew my name.”

“Yes,” I said.

Claire looked at the letter for a long moment.

When she looked up, her eyes were full, but she hadn’t cried yet.

“I need to call Tom,” she said.

“My husband.

I need to tell him I’m going to be late.”

She reached for her phone.

Her hand was trembling.

Chapter 6: Everything We Lost

Tom arrived an hour later.

Claire had called him from the hallway, speaking in a low voice while Anna made fresh coffee and I sat at the table not knowing what to do with my hands.

I could hear the shape of the conversation without making out the words — the pause when she told him, the longer pause after, and then her voice again, steadier.