I remembered Robert’s face, every time he talked about her. That faraway look. That softness in his voice. My little sister. I remembered the way he’d smile when a girl with a long braid walked past us on the street, and then go quiet.
“He thought you were his sister,” I said. “He thought of you as his sister. His whole life.”
Linda folded her arms tighter.
“That was a very long time ago,” she said.
“How long,” I asked, “have you known who I am?”
She hesitated.
“Linda.”
“Since Emily and David got engaged,” she said finally.
I stared at her.
“That was six years ago,” I said.
“Emily showed us a photograph,” Linda said. “At the engagement dinner. Of her parents. You and Robert. On a beach somewhere.” She swallowed. “I recognized him right away. He was older. Much older. Gray hair. But I knew.”
“And you never said anything.”
“I didn’t see the point.”
“You didn’t see the point?”
I thought about every holiday dinner we’d shared.
Every Thanksgiving at Emily and David’s house. Every Christmas Eve. Every birthday party. Linda across the table, passing the green beans.
I thought about Robert’s funeral. Four years ago. Linda had been there. She’d stood in the back of the church in a black dress. She’d hugged me at the reception and said, I’m so sorry for your loss, Carol.
I thought about all the times since then, when I’d talked about Robert. At dinners. At Emily’s baby shower. At Christmas. Robert would have loved this. Robert used to say. Robert always made the gravy.
And Linda had sat there and listened.
Knowing she’d grown up beside him. Knowing he’d taught her to ride a bike.
“Did you ever tell him?” I asked. “Before he died? Did you ever tell Robert you’d found him?”
Linda shook her head.
“No.”
Robert died two years after Emily’s wedding.
At the wedding, he’d stood across the reception hall from Linda all night long. He’d danced with Emily. He’d given a toast that made everybody cry. He’d shaken Linda’s hand at the head table and said, Pleasure to meet you, Mrs. Henderson. You raised a fine son.
And he’d had no idea.
He died never knowing that the little girl he’d missed for forty years had been standing right in front of him. Living a twenty-minute drive away.
David pulled out one of my dining room chairs and sat down heavily. Like his legs had given out.
“Mom,” he said. “Why? Why would you hide that? From all of us? From him?”
Linda’s face hardened.
“Because Robert abandoned me,” she said.
The room went quiet.
Linda turned from the window. Her eyes were bright. Angry.
“When I was fifteen,” she said, “Robert moved away. He was twenty-two. He got a job at a factory in Ohio. He packed up his truck and drove away. And he promised me. He stood in the driveway and he promised me. He said, Linda, you’ll always be my sister. We’ll always be family. I’ll come back for every holiday. I’ll call every Sunday.”
Her voice cracked.
“He called for about six months,” she said. “Then it was once a month. Then it was Christmas cards. Then he met you.” She looked at me. “And he got married. And he got his new house, and his new wife, and his new baby. And I became somebody he used to know.”
“Did you ever contact him?” David asked quietly.
“He knew where I was.”
“Mom,” David said. “That’s not what I asked.”
Linda looked away.
Back out the window.
She didn’t answer.
I looked down at the photograph still in my hand. The skinny young man in the plaid shirt. The girl with the braid. The crooked smile.
“Robert wrote on the back,” I said, “that he hoped you’d come home.”
Linda gave a short, bitter laugh.
“People write all kinds of things,” she said.
Something about her certainty bothered me.
It nagged at me. Like a splinter.
I knew Robert hadn’t been perfect. Nobody knows that better than a wife of thirty-four years. We’d had our fights. Plenty of them. He worked too much. He forgot our anniversary twice. He could be stubborn as a mule and twice as quiet when he was upset.
But he wasn’t a man who gave up on people.
Not ever. Not on anyone.
