He did not answer.
That silence told me more than any confession could have.
I stepped into the courtyard.
“Planned?”
David turned.
The color left his face.
“Eleanor.”
The woman closed her eyes.
For one terrible second, none of us moved.
Then I looked at David.
“Who is she?”
“My daughter. Clara.”
Clara gave me a small, unhappy smile.
“I’m sorry we met this way.”
I barely heard her.
My chest felt tight.
“What did you recognize me from?”
David took a step closer.
I moved back.
“Don’t.”
He stopped immediately.
The restaurant noise drifted through the open kitchen door behind us. Glasses clinking, People laughing, and a waiter calling for another bottle of wine.
Five minutes earlier, I had been sitting at a table overlooking the harbor, believing I had found something I thought life had taken from me forever. Now I was standing in a courtyard with a man who had admitted our meeting was not an accident.
“Tell me the truth,” I said.
David glanced at Clara.
She shook her head.
“No more help from me, Dad. You tell her.”
He looked older than he had that morning.
Not 70, ancient.
“My wife knew your husband.”
I stared at him.
“What?”
“Ruth knew Michael.”
The sound of my husband’s name in David’s voice made my stomach drop.
Michael had been dead for four years.
We had been married for 39.
He had never mentioned anyone named Ruth.
“How?”
David looked toward an empty table in the corner of the courtyard.
“They met here.”
“In Malta?”
“Yes.”
“When?”
“Thirty-two years ago.”
I laughed once, but there was no humor in it.
“Michael never came to Malta.”
David said nothing.
That silence again.
I thought about all the stories Michael had told me over the years.
