“Please don’t make an old woman defend every memory.”
That silenced me.
But something was wrong.
And for the first time, I suspected my parents had kept a secret from me.
“I’m staying tonight,” I told Mom.
You’re lying.
“I’m perfectly capable of being alone.”
“Then you won’t mind the company.”
“Claire, you’re being stubborn.”
“Wonder where I learned that.”
She smiled, but I still couldn’t shake the feeling that she was avoiding something.
My parents had kept a secret.
***
After she fell asleep, I opened Dad’s albums.
One showed a little girl beside a fence.
Summer, 1977.
I was born in 1974.
Another showed a boy.
She was avoiding something.
Michael, age seven.
The security guard’s name.
I compared the handwriting with Dad’s other notes. It matched.
Why had he kept these photographs?
Then I found a Christmas picture of Dad holding a little girl.
