“Especially her father.”
For a second, I couldn’t understand the words.
Sophie’s mother had been dead eighteen years.
How could she have asked Arthur Hale for anything?
THEN I REALLY LOOKED AT HIM
For perhaps the first time in my life—
I studied his face.
The angle of his shoulders.
The way he tilted his head.
A small scar along his chin.
His mouth.
Something about that mouth bothered me.
It looked familiar.
Then a memory returned.
An old photograph of my mother.
Same crooked smile.
Same shape around the lips.
And suddenly I remembered something she had told me when I was seventeen.
We were sitting at the kitchen table.
She held a cup of tea she never drank.
“There was a baby before you.”
I had looked at her.
“What?”
“A boy.”
She stared at the table.
“Before I met your father.”
I was young.
Uncomfortable.
Afraid that asking questions might hurt her.
So I didn’t.
She never finished the story.
