My chest tightened.
“What?”
“Documents.”
Stephen leaned forward.
“What documents?”
“I don’t know.”
“You never saw them?”
“No.”
Daniel turned to me.
“My mother hid them.”
“Where?”
“I don’t know that either.”
I stood and walked to the window.
Outside, Lily’s pink bicycle lay on the lawn.
Her helmet hung from one handlebar.
Normal life.
Everything kept returning to normal objects while the past opened beneath me.
“Start at the beginning,” I said.
Daniel did.
His mother, Evelyn, had worked in payroll at Harlow for almost thirty years.
Claire babysat Daniel during one summer and part of the following school year.
He remembered her as funny and patient.
She taught him card tricks.
She let him stay awake past bedtime.
She once took him to the river to watch a meteor shower.
Then she stopped coming.
Daniel’s mother told him Claire had moved.
Years passed.
When Daniel and I became engaged, my father recognized Daniel’s surname and asked about his parents.
