“Baby,” she said.
Sarah stood.
Diana moved toward her.
Sarah stepped back.
Her mother stopped as if she had walked into glass.
Neither spoke.
Ruth appeared behind Diana, then quietly withdrew.
Diana sat in the chair across the table.
She set her handbag on her lap and held it there with both hands.
“Ask me,” she said.
Sarah had imagined screaming.
Instead, her voice came out flat.
“Did he want me?”
Diana’s face changed.
Of all the questions, apparently she had not prepared for that one.
“Sarah.”
“Did he?”
“Yes.”
“How do you know?”
“He talked to you every night.”
Sarah looked at her.
“When I was pregnant,” Diana said. “He’d put his hand here.”
She touched her stomach through the coat.
“He’d tell you what he’d done that day. As if you were waiting for a report.”
Sarah gripped the back of the chair.
“He didn’t even know if you were a girl yet. He called you Peanut because that was what the nurse said you looked like on the first scan.”
“Stop.”
Diana fell silent.
Sarah looked at the identity theft poster because it was the only thing in the room that did not hurt.
“You let me think he didn’t want me.”
“I thought—”
“You let me.”
“Yes.”
No defense.
Sarah had wanted a defense so she could tear it apart.
Her mother’s agreement left her with nothing to strike except the truth.
“Why?”
Diana lowered her eyes.
“Because after he disappeared, a man came to the apartment.”
“Cutter?”
“No. Another man. I never knew his name.”
“What did he say?”
“He told me Michael had stolen something. He said if I had it, I needed to give it back.”
“Did you?”
“No.”
“Did you know what it was?”
“No.”
“Then what?”
Diana swallowed.
“He described where my sister worked. What time she left. He described the dress I’d bought for your cousin’s wedding. Then he put his hand on the crib we’d assembled in the bedroom.”
Sarah felt the room become very still.
“He said Michael’s mistakes didn’t have to become our mistakes.”
“Did you tell the police?”
“Yes.”
“And?”
“They took a statement.”
“That’s all?”
“I don’t know what else they did. Nobody told me.”
Sarah sat down.
Her mother kept both hands around the handbag.
“I went to my sister’s. Then we moved again. Ruth helped. Hank sent money once, and I sent it back because I thought any connection could bring them to us.”
“So you erased him.”
Diana flinched.
“Yes.”
“You made him the kind of man I could stop missing.”
Tears slid down Diana’s face.
“Yes.”
Sarah looked away.
For years, she had believed the worst thing a father could do was leave before knowing you.
Now she discovered there were worse things other people could do with his absence.
“I thought it would keep you alive,” Diana said.
“You also kept me from him.”
“I know.”
“No. I mean all of him. His name. His face. Whether I laugh like him. Whether he liked winter. Whether he was funny. You took things I didn’t even know I was missing.”
Diana pressed her lips together.
“I did.”
The apology did not come.
Sarah realized her mother was waiting until it would mean something more than an attempt to stop the conversation.
“Was Hank there?” she asked.
Diana looked toward the door.
“When Michael died?”
“When he disappeared.”
“I don’t know everything.”
“What do you know?”
“Hank was supposed to meet him.”
“Where?”
“A warehouse by the river.”
“Why?”
“I never got an answer I understood.”
Sarah stood again.
This time her mother did not try to stop her.
In the hallway, Ruth rose from a bench.
Sarah said, “Where is he?”
Ruth looked at her for a moment, then pointed toward a room with an open door.
Hank sat alone at a table.
He had taken off his vest. Folded beside him, it looked smaller, only leather and stitching. Without it, he was a tired man in a gray shirt with a healing scrape across one knuckle.
He stood when she entered.
“Were you there?” Sarah asked.
He did not pretend to misunderstand.
“I got there late.”
“How late?”
“Eleven minutes.”
There was something terrible about the precision.
“What happened in those eleven minutes?”
Hank looked at the empty chair across from him.
She remained standing.
“All right,” he said.
He put his hands on the edge of the table.