“Then you won't mind the company.”
“Claire, you're being stubborn.”
“Wonder where I learned that.”
She smiled, but I still couldn't shake the feeling that she was avoiding something.
My parents had kept a secret.
***
After she fell asleep, I opened Dad's albums.
One showed a little girl beside a fence.
Summer, 1977.
I was born in 1974.
Another showed a boy.
She was avoiding something.
Michael, age seven.
The security guard's name.
I compared the handwriting with Dad's other notes. It matched.
Why had he kept these photographs?
Then I found a Christmas picture of Dad holding a little girl.
Another showed a boy.
On the back:
Our first Christmas together.
The child looked exactly like me.
But I was already three in 1977.
Why would Dad call my fourth Christmas our first together?
Why had he kept these photographs?
Beneath the photographs lay an envelope dated twenty years earlier.
Addressed to Eleanor and George.
