“So you matched with me because of Nora.”
Claire didn’t try to avoid the question.
“At first, yes.”
I put the photograph down on the coffee table.
“Wow.”
“Ethan, I wasn’t trying to trick you into a relationship.”
“You literally recognized me from childhood and didn’t tell me.”
“I know.”
“You went to coffee already knowing who I was.”
“Yes.”
“And I knew nothing.”
Claire shut her eyes for a second.
“Yes. I meant to tell you that day.”
I picked up the photograph again and tapped the newer handwriting.
“You wrote this before you saw me again.”
I looked at the date once more.
“Were you ever going to tell me? Where was this taken?”
“The old Pine Street library.”
I frowned.
“Didn’t they gut that place years ago?”
“The original children’s room is still there,” she said. “They rebuilt around it.”
Then small pieces started coming back to me.
Low bookshelves.
Beanbags.
A paper sun hanging crooked from a ceiling tile.
I could almost smell the dusty carpet.
Then another detail surfaced.
Yellow.
I stared harder at the photograph.
“Her glasses were yellow.”
Claire blinked.
“What?”
“Nora’s glasses. They were yellow.”
Claire looked down at the picture.
“They were purple.”
“No,” I said. “They were yellow.”
She stared at me for a moment.
Then she laughed.
“She painted them.”
“What?”
“With yellow nail polish. My mother almost lost her mind.”
The memory arrived so suddenly that I had to sit down.
A girl sitting cross-legged in thick yellow glasses, holding a paperback much too close to her face.
I still couldn’t remember what book she was reading.
But I remembered being annoyed with her.
“You want to go there?” Claire asked.
I looked up at her.
She immediately realized what she’d done.
“Sorry. Wrong question.”
A moment passed.
Then she tried again.
“If you want to know where the picture came from, I’ll tell you here. Or I can show you. Or I can leave.”
It was the first thing she’d said all evening that didn’t sound as though she’d already decided what was best for me.
