“You look sad,” he said.
“I feel a little sad.”
“Apples help.”
I took it. “Thank you.”
Rachel looked down at her coffee. Her lashes trembled, and I saw not only the woman I had lost, but the woman she had become without me: careful, resilient, tired in ways rest could not fix. She had carried pregnancy alone, birth alone, first fevers and first steps and grocery bags and rent notices and questions she could not answer.
“I’m sorry,” I said.
Her eyes lifted. “For what?”
“For not finding you.”
“You thought I didn’t want to be found.”
“I should have doubted it.”
“I should have doubted your letter too.”
We sat with that. Blame would have been easier. It would have given us somewhere to put the anger. But the truth was stranger and more painful: we had both believed the thing that hurt most because it arrived in the other person’s name.
