His face changed.
Not dramatically.
Just enough.
Owen noticed.
“You know what it means.”
Daniel sat down.
“I might.”
Mrs. Parker waited.
Daniel rubbed his thumb across the edge of the photograph.
“When Dad was dying, he asked me something.”
“What?”
“He asked whether I remembered Mrs. Parker.”
She blinked.
“You?”
Daniel nodded.
“I said no.”
“Because we’d never met.”
“That’s what I thought.”
He turned the photograph over.
“But later I remembered something.”
He was eight years old when Thomas first brought him to the school.
His mother had been sick that week. Thomas needed somewhere for Daniel to stay while he met an old colleague.
“I sat in the library for an hour,” Daniel said.
Mrs. Parker stared at him.
“What year?”
“1979.”
Her expression shifted.
“I remember.”
Daniel looked up.
“You do?”
“There was a little boy reading under the circulation desk.”
Daniel laughed.
“That was me.”
Mrs. Parker covered her mouth.
