Something tightened in my chest, but I couldn’t say why.
They were going to talk about Daniel.
Twenty-two years of birthday cards he never sent, phone calls he never made, and now, on the one day I’d actually shown up for, they were going to honor the man who didn’t.
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I felt the hurt rise in my throat as if it had been waiting for me. I told myself to sit still, smile, and let them have this if they needed it.
Ava reached into the sleeve of her gown and pulled out a folded piece of paper. Claire pressed her hand over her mouth, and I saw her shoulders shake.
I felt the hurt rise in my throat.
“We found the notebook,” June said. “The one in the kitchen drawer.”
I closed my eyes and gripped the camera so hard that I heard the plastic creak. I thought about the gas receipt note, still folded in my wallet. I thought about Patricia, and every birthday I’d sat at that warped kitchen table with a pen, writing to three girls who were already asleep.
At the time, I told myself they’d read it someday or they wouldn’t, and either way I’d said what needed saying.
Then June started reading.
I closed my eyes.
“To my girls. You’re one-year-old today. I don’t know if you’ll ever read this, and I don’t know if I’ll still be doing this right by then, but I wanted to write it down, anyway.”
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Something cold ran straight down my spine.
I knew those words. I knew the rhythm of them and the man who’d written them, alone at a kitchen table above a hardware store, with three sleeping babies in a single crib because he couldn’t afford three.
I knew because that man was me!
