This time was different.
Daniel looked at him carefully.
“You’re the Harlow guy.”
Stephen nodded.
“And you’re Daniel.”
I sent Lily upstairs with a snack and a movie.
Then the three of us sat around the kitchen table.
Claire’s photograph rested between us.
Daniel stared at it for a long time.
“You knew her,” I said.
“Yes.”
“How?”
“She was my babysitter.”
I blinked.
“What?”
“When I was nine.”
I did the math.
“That doesn’t make sense.”
“It does. Claire was sixteen.”
“But Dad said—”
I stopped.
Dad hadn’t said anything except that Claire was my sister.
Margaret had given me the dates.
Daniel rubbed his face.
“My mother worked evenings at Harlow. Claire babysat me for about a year.”
A childhood connection.
Not a secret affair.
Not some impossible coincidence.
Just the kind of overlap that happens in a town built around one employer.
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
