Robert.
I pressed the paper against my chest.
Then I cried.
Not because the letter answered everything.
Because it didn’t.
The
next morning, Susan knocked on my door at eight.
I opened it without speaking.
She looked as though she hadn’t slept.
“Emily will be here at eleven,” she said.
I
stepped aside.
Susan entered and sat on the edge of the armchair.
For a while, we simply looked at each other.
Finally, I asked, “How old is she?”
“Forty-one.”
I did the math.
Susan had become pregnant when we were seventeen.
The year we’d graduated from high school.
The summer she’d supposedly gone to stay with an aunt in another state.
I remembered it clearly.
She’d been gone for almost eight months.
Her parents had told everyone she was helping a relative recover from surgery.
I’d written her letters.
She’d
answered only a few.
