My father’s mouth hung open. He laid his palm flat on the table. ‘Well, wait a minute. I mean, when we talked this morning, I just assumed Stella told you, Summer. I mean, I didn’t know how else you could know.’ When he registered my lost look, he tried again. ‘Our discussion in the apartment today. After Rosemary left. This is…you said you knew we were talking. Stella told you, right? She told you about Josephine?’
Rosemary covered her face with her hands, took a few steps away, and circled back around. ‘Richard, I think we should…’
It was as if time had stalled. They were in on the joke, while I was still floundering to get it. Josephine scratched her upturned nose and let out an uncomfortable laugh.
It was the upturned nose that did it. I saw a photograph, the one I found in my father’s old desk drawer in his bedroom and then moved to Stella’s hutch, next to the important papers, after she came home to die. A girl smiling, her body tilted toward a guy. I remembered looking at her nose and thinking what it must be like to have a nose like that. On the back of the photograph was an inscription about two people who were secretly engaged in 1970.
And I saw the same face, older now, as the dark-haired, freckled girl in the picture that had appeared and disappeared in Stella’s house, first under a National Geographic, then wedged into an encyclopedia. Once I even found it propped in the medicine cabinet in the downstairs bathroom-practically in plain sight. Stella knew I would see it.
The baby is healthy, Stella had screeched, steeped in dementia. She’s being taken care of. You think the world knows, but who cares if they do, Ruth? The only one who really cares is you.
He’s got something in hiding. Like the Nazis.
My mind was a sheet of paper. Someone had just pricked a pin through it, and a slice of light shone through. I stared at Josephine. Maybe Stella had given me the punch line before the joke. Maybe a lot of people had.
‘Oh.’ It popped out of me like a hard, lead BB, falling out of my mouth and plunking to the ground.
My father took a big step back. ‘Oh, fuck.’
He turned around, stumbling over an empty chair behind me. A few patrons looked up, startled. He passed the chrome trash can near the front, which was overflowing with crimpededged paper plates, and practically fell through the door. I watched him disappear behind a bus kiosk, then found him again across the street.
‘Oh dear.’ Rosemary touched the edge of her cheek. ‘I’d better…’ And she darted after him, pressing out into the cold street.
It all happened so fast. I was still sitting at the table, the old letter in front of me. Josephine shifted her weight, still standing. ‘Okay.’ She let out a self-conscious laugh.
I glanced at her. The cold, icy shock had begun to thaw, not entirely, but enough for me to react. I hid my hands in my lap and curled them up, cursing my childish, incompetent father for leaving me here, alone, to grapple with what I didn’t quite yet understand. My mouth puckered, about to say something dismissive, perhaps an excuse that I needed to use the bathroom. I could find a back door and escape. Or I could just get up and leave, like the rest of them had. I didn’t owe this woman anything, not exactly. She probably knew much more about me than I did about her.
I had asked my father about this, of course. I had asked if the baby had died. He hadn’t answered me. I hadn’t lingered on it, though-I hadn’t thought about it, because there was so much else to think about. And maybe because I hadn’t wanted to consider it.
‘Jesus,’ I whispered.
They’d probably been corresponding for years, my father telling Josephine much more than he told me, using his sober, unglamorous words. Rosemary seemed to know Josephine, too.
I peeked at her. Josephine fidgeted with the strap on her purse and scanned the laminated menu, just for something to look at, because she wasn’t sure of her place, or where she was supposed to go. She had a funny way of nervously smiling with only one side of her mouth. I felt a warm, bittersweet ache-Stella used to smile just like that when the irritatingly chipper nurse prepped her for her blood draws.
Something inside me reversed directions. I released my hands from the crimps in my lap and forced my shoulders down from their locked position. It was possible Josephine was more confused than I was. If she was who I suspected-it was beginning to make more and more sense-then what had her life been like? What sorts of problems did she have? What kinds of questions and fears were inside of her?
I counted three long breaths.
‘They make really good espresso milkshakes here.’
Josephine jumped. My voice even startled me a little. I swallowed, then continued. ‘I used to get them as a little kid, probably when I was too young to really have coffee. They still have them on the menu. I know it’s cold out, but do you want one?’
Josephine’s entire face lifted. With just that, with those few words. ‘Oh.’ She fumbled with her purse. ‘Well, sure. Let me give you some money.’
‘I’ll get it.’
Her eyebrows rose. She looked so grateful.
‘No, it’s fine. I’m happy to.’