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Then Nora asked the first question.
We sat under a maple tree.
Nobody spoke for almost a minute.
Then Nora asked the first question.
“Did you ever miss us?”
Clarissa inhaled sharply. She’s obviously expected a teary reunion instead of pointed questions.
Lily went next.
Clarissa looked at me first, ready to divert the blame somehow.
“Did you know Dad worked two jobs?”
Gabriella’s voice came smallest of all.
“Did you ever wonder what we sounded like when we laughed?”
Clarissa looked at me first, ready to divert the blame somehow.
She said I had made everything harder. That I had never understood her. That she had been drowning too.
Nora cut in before I could answer.
“You never came looking.”
She didn’t raise her voice.
That made it hit harder.
“Dad never kept us from you,” she said. “You never came looking.”
Clarissa opened her mouth.
Closed it.
Looked away.
“You don’t know anything about our lives at all.”
“That isn’t fair,” she said finally. “You don’t know what those years were like for me.”
Nora answered, calm as ever.
“You don’t know anything about our lives at all.”
The mask slipped after that.
Not all at once.
Just enough.
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