about my mother’s name.
After that day, I began watching Robert more carefully.
And the more attention I paid, the stranger his behavior seemed.
Whenever Jake left the room, Robert talked to me longer.
One day, he asked what town I had grown up in. Another time, he asked whether my father was still alive. I froze.
I knew almost nothing about my father. My mother had always told me that he had left when I was very young.
“He wasn’t part of our lives,” I answered shortly.
Robert’s expression changed.
“Is that what your mother told you?”
At that exact moment, Jake came back into the room, and the conversation ended. That night, I seriously considered telling
Jake everything. But what was I supposed to say?
“I think your father looks at me strangely”?
Maybe I was imagining things. Maybe I was reading too much into his behavior.
Then,
