The woman who opened the door at 4B knew my father’s face better than I did. I could tell because of how she looked at mine.
“You look like him,” she said, and her hand went to the doorframe like she needed it.
I had rehearsed nothing. Six days of knowing the address and I had rehearsed nothing.
Behind her, on a laminate counter the color of weak tea, sat an orange mug with the Kellogg plant logo cracking off the side. Thirty-year reunion. My mother had called it the ugliest thing ever fired in a kiln. She’d hidden it twice. It kept coming back.
It was here. It had been here the whole time.
Let me back up, because the folder came first.
My father, Gerald Novak, was put in the ground on a Tuesday under a sky that couldn’t commit to rain. Fifty-nine. His heart quit between the driveway and the mailbox, and a neighbor found him with the flyers still in his hand.
My mother hasn’t opened his closet since. She stands in front of it sometimes with her palm flat against the wood, like she’s checking a forehead for fever. So the paperwork fell to me. I’m Danielle. Thirty years old, his only child, and apparently the last person on earth still holding a working image of who he was.
The folder said ESTATE in his block capitals. He labeled everything. Fuse box, gutters, the drawer where the batteries lived. A man who wanted the world sorted.
Two weeks after the funeral, the bank sent a statement, and the statement had a charge on it I didn’t recognize. A property management company in Wyandotte. Twenty-two minutes from our kitchen table.
Storage unit, I thought. He’d been talking for years about clearing the garage. I closed the folder, made Mom the chicken thing she likes with the lemon, and sat with her while a home renovation show flickered and she pretended to watch it.
I didn’t think about it again until Thursday.
Thursday I pulled the older statements. Not because I suspected anything – because he’d have wanted them in order.
Same charge. Same amount. Same day of the month.
Twenty-four months back.
Forty-eight.
Seventy-two.
Six years, without a single missed payment, from a man who once forgot my birthday because the Lions were in overtime.
I called the management office on a Monday morning and used the flattest voice I had. Handling my father’s affairs. Need to confirm the tenant of record for 4B.
Paper shuffled. A keyboard clicked.
“Renee Castillo,” the woman said. “Joint lease. Co-signer is Gerald Novak.”
“Joint,” I repeated.
“Since 2018. Would you like the renewal date?”
I said no thank you, hung up, and sat in my car in the pharmacy lot for eleven minutes without turning the key.
I told my mother I had a lunch meeting.
The building was three stories of brown brick with a landscaping company’s mulch job out front and someone’s kid’s bike chained to the stair rail. Not a love nest. Not anything. Just a place people lived.
The mailboxes were in the entry, and 4B had two labels taped under the slot in careful marker.
CASTILLO.
And beneath it, smaller, in a rounder hand, with a heart drawn beside it:
SOFIA.
I read those seven letters maybe forty times. Then I climbed the stairs, and I knocked, and I didn’t even get to the second knock before the door opened, because she had been waiting for someone. Maybe not me. Someone.
“You’d better come in,” Renee said. Her voice had a scrape in it, like she’d been talking all morning to people who kept saying they were sorry.
I didn’t move. “How long?”
“Eleven years.”
The hallway made a sound. Or I did.
“We got married in Ohio,” she added, quieter. “October, 2019. Small. Courthouse.”
There’s a specific feeling when the floor stops being reliable. Not falling – worse. The suspicion that the floor was never load-bearing and you’d simply never asked.
“My mother,” I said, “is at home right now. In her bathrobe. She can’t open his closet.”
I watched it land. I watched it go somewhere behind her eyes and not come back out.
She took a long time. Long enough that I understood the answer would be worse than the silence.
“Danielle,” she said – she knew my name, she had always known my name – “Gerald told me your mother died in 2015.”
“That’s not – “
“He showed me the program.” Her mouth barely worked. “From the funeral. Her photograph on the front. Her name printed under it. I kept it in the drawer with our documents for six years because he said it was the only copy he had left.”
I heard a door open down the hall behind her. Small footsteps, the fast kind, the kind that come when a kid has decided something is urgent.
A girl came around the corner. Nine, maybe. Dark hair pulled back in a way that suggested she’d done it herself. She was carrying a picture frame against her chest with both arms, the way you carry something you’ve been told is fragile.
She turned it around and held it up toward me, and I saw my father in his good blue shirt, the one from Easter, with this child on his shoulders and his whole face open with a happiness I recognized.
“That’s Daddy,” she said. “Right?”
The Name He Used Here
I looked at the picture instead of the child.
Gerald’s left hand was wrapped around Sofia’s shin. His wedding ring was visible. The photograph had been taken in a park, probably the one behind the building, because the same bent silver fence showed through the trees.
“Yes,” I said.
Sofia smiled. “He said you were funny.”
My tongue stuck to the roof of my mouth.
Renee reached for the frame. “Sof, go put your shoes on.”
“Why?”
“Because we’re going to Grandma’s.”
“Are you coming?”
Renee looked at me. “Go.”
The girl carried the picture away, but she kept looking over her shoulder. Her socks didn’t match. One had tiny strawberries, the other had gray stripes.
Renee shut the door and leaned against it.
“I need to know what he told you,” I said.
She rubbed both palms over her thighs. “That he was divorced.”
“Was he?”
“He said your mother had taken the house and wanted no contact. He said you lived in Chicago and didn’t speak to him.”
“I live eight minutes from my mother.”
Her lips parted. No sound came out.
“He came every Wednesday,” she said. “Sometimes Friday nights. He took Sofia to school when I worked late. He fixed things. The bathroom fan, the loose stair, the stupid cabinet door that keeps coming off.”
“He had a heart attack in our driveway.”
Renee lowered her head.
“What did he tell you his name was?”
That got her.
She looked up. “Gerald.”
“Full name.”
“Gerald Novak.”
“Did you ever see his driver’s license?”
“No.”
“Social Security card?”
“No.”
“Anything?”
She walked to a narrow table by the kitchen and picked up a white envelope. My father’s block capitals were on it.
DANIELLE N.
The ink was faded at the edges.
I didn’t take it.
“What’s that?”
“He gave it to me three weeks ago. Told me to keep it until Sofia was eighteen.”
“For what?”
“I don’t know. He said if anything happened to him, you would come.”
The room got very small.
Renee held it out again. “I didn’t know where to send it.”
I took it. The paper inside was folded twice. My father’s handwriting covered both sides.
Danielle,
If you’re reading this, I’m dead, and you probably hate me. You have every right. Don’t let anyone tell you I didn’t love you. That part was never a lie.
Sofia is my daughter. I found out in 2017 after Renee’s mother sent me a letter. I had known Renee before you were born. I left when she told me she was pregnant because I was afraid and because your mother was pregnant too. I chose the house I had already built.
The sentence stopped there.
I read it twice.
Renee watched my face. “What does it say?”
I kept going.
I sent money when I could. I lied about the money. I told your mother it was for work expenses. I told Renee I was saving for us. Both were true for about six months. After that, I was just moving things around so nobody asked the right question.
I married Renee because I wanted Sofia to have my name before she got old enough to ask why the other children at school had fathers who signed things. I know that’s not a good reason. I don’t have a good reason.
Your mother knows more than you think.
There was no signature. Only G.
I folded the letter along the old lines.
“Your mother,” I said. “Who is she?”
Renee turned her head toward the hallway. “Marjorie.”
That was my grandmother’s name.
I put the letter on the table.
“Marjorie Novak?”
“Yes.”
“Your mother is Marjorie Novak?”
“She was. She died in 2020.”
I sat down because my knees had made the decision without asking.
The Mug Wasn’t a Coincidence
Renee brought me water in a glass with a faded cartoon fish on it. I held it between my hands and didn’t drink.
“How did he meet your mother?” I asked.
“At the Kellogg plant. They worked there together.”
My mother had never worked at Kellogg. My father had. He was a machine operator from 1987 until the plant cut his shift in 2016.
“What did your mother do?”
“Payroll.”
I looked at the orange mug on the counter.
Renee followed my eyes. “That was hers.”
“She was at the reunion?”
“She went with him. In 2014, I think.”
My father had told us he went alone. He’d come home with a headache and the mug, and my mother had held it up by the handle.
“Who gave you this?”
“Your mother.”
The glass slipped in my hand. Water ran over my fingers and onto the table.
Renee grabbed a dish towel. “She came here twice.”
“When?”
“The first time was 2018. Right after Marjorie died. She came with Gerald. I thought she was his sister.”
My face felt hot now, in patches.
“What did she say?”
“Not much. She asked about Sofia’s school. She brought a bag of clothes and some books.” Renee wiped the table. “The second time was last Christmas. Gerald wasn’t here. She sat in that chair for almost an hour.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know. She kept asking if he was good to Sofia.”
“What did you say?”
“I said yes.”
Renee folded the wet towel into a square.
“Then she said, ‘He wasn’t good to Danielle.'”
The kitchen refrigerator kicked on. A plastic container rattled inside it.
I put the glass down.
“She knew.”
“I thought she knew about the divorce.”
“My parents were never divorced.”
“I know that now.”
“Did she tell you anything else?”
Renee shook her head. “She said your father would explain when he was ready. Then she gave me the mug and told me not to let him throw it away.”
I laughed once. It came out wrong. Thin and mean.
That mug had been a joke in our house. My mother had hidden it in the linen closet, behind the vacuum attachments, under winter scarves. My father always found it and put it back on the kitchen shelf. When I was sixteen, I asked why they kept fighting over a stupid mug.
My mother had said, “Because your father has a talent for bringing home evidence.”
I thought she meant evidence of bad taste.
Renee pulled out a chair. “Your mother came here knowing who I was?”
“Apparently.”
“And she let me believe she was dead.”
“My father told you that.”
“But she knew.”
“Yes.”
The word sat between us like a dropped plate.
Sofia called from the hallway. “Mom, where are my purple shoes?”
“Under your bed!”
“They’re not!”
“Then the other bed!”
A child moved through the apartment, opening drawers, knocking something over, muttering about shoes. The ordinary noise was almost cruel.
I had spent eleven years believing my father was boring.
That was the insult I kept returning to. Not that he had lied. That he had managed to have an entire second family while still complaining about the price of eggs and asking me to reset his cable box.
What He Left in the Garage
I went home at 3:40 and found my mother asleep in the recliner with the television still on. A man on the screen was removing a kitchen island with a crowbar.
I stood in the doorway for a while.
She opened her eyes. “How was your meeting?”
I put the white envelope on the coffee table.
The blood drained out of her face so quickly it looked practiced.
“Where did you get that?”
“4B.”
She pressed the remote until the television went black.
“Who is Renee Castillo?”
My mother didn’t answer.
“Who is Sofia?”
Her fingers went to the collar of her bathrobe. “You went there.”
“Yes.”
“You shouldn’t have.”
“That’s what you have?”
“Danielle.”
“Did you know she was alive?”
“I knew about Renee.”
“Did you know about the child?”
She looked at the floor.
That was the answer.
I walked into the kitchen and opened the drawer where Dad kept the batteries. Labels were still stuck to everything. AAA. AA. C. D. 9V. A tiny strip of masking tape marked OLD, though none of the batteries in there had dates.
“Did you know he was married to her?”
“Not at first.”
“When did you know?”
She put both hands on the arms of the chair. “After your father got sick.”
“He wasn’t sick.”
“He had chest pain.”
“Apparently he had a second wife too.”
“Don’t talk like that.”
“How should I talk?”
She looked older than she had that morning. Her hair had come loose from its clip, and a dark line of mascara sat beneath one eye. My mother does not wear mascara.
“I found the letter in 2018,” she said.
“What letter?”
“From Marjorie. She sent it to the house.”
I turned around.
“She said Gerald had a daughter. She said he had been seeing Renee for years. She said Renee was pregnant when Gerald married me.”
I waited.
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Because you were thirty-six years old.”
“I’m thirty.”
“I know how old you are.”
“Why did you say thirty-six?”
She stared at me. “I don’t know.”
It was the first honest thing she’d said.
She went to the hall closet and pulled down a blue plastic bin. It had CHRISTMAS written on the top, though inside were old tax forms, three dead phones, my kindergarten finger paintings and a bundle of rubber bands stuck together.
The letter was there, inside a yellow envelope with no stamp.
My grandmother’s handwriting slanted hard to the right.
Linda,
I have no right to ask you to do anything. Gerald made his choice and then made another one when he came back to you. Renee was nineteen. She was alone. He told her he would marry her after the baby came, then you got pregnant and he disappeared.
I am not defending him. I am telling you because she deserves to stop being punished for what he did.
The rest was about Sofia. Her birthday. Her asthma. The name of the school.
I read it standing up.
“He came back to you?” I asked.
My mother sat very still.
“Was he already married to Renee when he came back?”
“Her mother said they never filed the papers.”
“But he did marry her.”
“In 2019.”
“After he married you.”
“Yes.”
“Then he was a bigamist.”
My mother flinched at the word. Good.
“Why stay?”
She picked one of the dead phones out of the bin and turned it over in her palm. “Because you were twelve. Because he cried. Because he said he had made one terrible mistake and it was over.”
“It wasn’t over.”
“No.”
“Did you ever meet Renee before 2018?”
“No.”
“Did you send her clothes?”
“I sent Sofia clothes.”
“Did you go to the apartment?”
She squeezed the dead phone until the plastic creaked. “Twice.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Would you have wanted to know?”
I looked at the black television. My reflection floated in it beside hers.
“Yes.”
My mother made a small sound. Not a cry. More like something in her throat had caught on a nail.
The Part He Got Wrong
The next morning I called the bank.
Dad’s account showed payments to 4B, but there were others. A pediatric clinic. A school lunch account. A pharmacy in Wyandotte. On the statement, the name was cut off after CASTI.
I made a spreadsheet because that’s what I do when things get bad. I put dates in one column and amounts in the next.
Renee’s name appeared in 2017.
That was before the lease. Before the marriage. Before the version of the story my father had written down.
I went back to 4B on Saturday with the letter in my purse. Sofia was sitting at the kitchen table, coloring a horse purple. Renee opened the door wearing a sweatshirt with a bleach stain near the pocket.
“Your mother told me Gerald found out about Sofia in 2017,” I said.
Renee stared at me.
“He wrote that in the letter.”
“Then he lied in the letter too.”
She stepped aside.
The apartment looked different in daylight. There were school papers on the refrigerator, a cracked ceramic cat by the sink, and a row of framed photographs on the wall. Gerald appeared in every other one.
At a birthday party, holding a cake.
At a playground, pushing Sofia on a swing.
On a couch with a cast on his wrist, asleep while the girl leaned against his shoulder.
The family I had just found was already old.
Renee sat across from me.
“I met him in 2013,” she said. “At the plant. I was doing temp work in shipping.”
“He told you he was divorced.”
“He told me he was separated.”
“Same lie with nicer shoes.”
She looked down at her hands. “I got pregnant. He said he needed time. Then your mother found out, or maybe he told her. I don’t know. He stopped answering.”
“And Sofia?”
“She was born in 2014.”
I looked toward the purple horse.
“He came back when she was three. He said he had been paying for things through his mother. He said he wanted to be her father, but he didn’t want to hurt you.”
“He didn’t want to hurt me.”
Renee gave a tired little laugh. “That was his line.”
“Did you love him?”
She looked at me then. No scrape in her voice. No apology.
“Yes.”
The answer hit harder than the marriage.
“And my mother?”
“She came to my house in 2018. She knew where I lived. She knew about Sofia. She had a folder with copies of everything.”
“What everything?”
“Your father’s pay stubs. Bank records. The courthouse papers. A DNA test.”
I stopped moving.
“DNA test for what?”
Renee opened a cabinet and took out a manila folder. It was held shut with a rubber band.
On the front, in my father’s handwriting:
SOFIA CASTILLO / DANIELLE NOVAK
My name was underneath hers.
Renee set it on the table but didn’t open it.
“Your father wanted us to take a test together,” she said. “He said he had a reason.”
“What reason?”
“He never told me.”
“Did you take it?”
“Yes.”
My mouth went dry.
“With both of us?”
“No. With Sofia and Gerald first. Then with you.”
I looked at the folder.
“What did it say?”
Renee’s thumb ran over the rubber band. “Sofia was his daughter.”
“I know.”
“Your test was different.”
The purple crayon snapped in the next room.
I heard Sofia say, “Mom?”
Renee didn’t answer her.
“What does different mean?”
She opened the folder.
There were three pages. The first was the lab report for Gerald and Sofia. Probability of paternity: 99.99%.
The second was a letter from the lab asking for a new sample from me because the first cheek swab had been compromised.
The third was a report dated March 4, 2021.
I read the words.
The tested individual, Gerald Novak, cannot be the biological father of Danielle Novak.
There was a note beneath it.
The results exclude a parent-child relationship.
I didn’t understand the letters at first. I understood the shape of them. The official tone. The way a stranger had reduced my whole childhood to a result you could staple.
Renee’s voice came from far away.
“Gerald got the report two years ago.”
I turned the page over.
On the back, he had written:
Don’t tell Danielle until I can tell her myself.
Under that:
Ask Linda about the night at St. Vincent’s.
I stood so fast the chair hit the wall.
Sofia came into the room with the broken crayon in her hand. “Are you leaving?”
I looked at her. Same dark hair. Same open face in the pictures. My father had chosen her, lied for her, paid for her, and written her name first.
“I have to go,” I said.
“Are you coming back?”
I wanted to say yes.
I wanted to say something clean that a nine-year-old could carry.
Instead I said, “I don’t know.”
St. Vincent’s
My mother was in the kitchen when I got home. She had changed into jeans and a sweater, as if she had been expecting a visitor or a sentence.
“St. Vincent’s,” I said.
She closed the cabinet.
“What happened there?”
“Your father was not your father.”
She said it without drama. No hand to her mouth. No chair dragged out.
I put the DNA report on the counter.
Her eyes moved over the page.
“Who is?”
She looked at the orange mug sitting beside the sink.
I had not seen it there that morning. I had left it at 4B.
My mother must have brought it home.
“Your father worked the night shift,” she said. “I was in labor. Marjorie drove me because Gerald was at the plant.”
“That doesn’t answer me.”
“No.”
“Who?”
She took the mug by the handle. It was chipped at the rim.
“His name was Walter Pike.”
I knew that name. Everybody in town knew Walter Pike. He had owned the body shop on Fort Street, the one with the red sign and the old tow truck in front.
“He was married.”
“Yes.”
“You slept with him?”
My mother looked at me. “Once.”
There it was. The ugly word. She didn’t soften it.
“At the plant reunion?”
“No. Before you were born.”
“Did Gerald know?”
“Not then.”
“How did he find out?”
“Marjorie told him. She had seen us.”
I gripped the edge of the counter.
“Why did he marry you?”
My mother put the mug down.
“Because he loved me.”
The answer sounded almost insulting in its simplicity.
“Did he know I wasn’t his?”
“He suspected. He asked me in 1998.”
“And you lied.”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
She looked at the floor, then at the folder. “Because by then you were eight. He had been your father every day of your life. I thought the truth would only hurt him.”
“Only him?”
“No.”
She sat down.
“Gerald found Walter’s old insurance paperwork when he was helping me clean out the attic. He knew the dates didn’t match. He asked if there had been someone else. I told him no. He believed me because he wanted to.”
“And then he found out for real.”
“Your father ordered the test after he met Sofia’s mother again. He wanted to know whether he had two daughters.”
“He found out he had one.”
My mother folded her hands.
“He came home with the report. He sat right there. He didn’t speak for an hour.”
“What did he say?”
“He asked if you’d ever call him Dad if you knew.”
I looked at the chair across from her. The one he used during tax season. The one with the broken arm he kept meaning to fix.
“What did you say?”
“I told him you already did.”
She picked up the mug again.
“Did he tell Renee?”
“No.”
“Did he tell me?”
“No.”
“Did he tell anyone?”
“Marjorie, maybe. She was still alive then.”
“So he knew Sofia was his and I wasn’t, and he kept paying for both homes, kept lying to both of us, and died before saying anything.”
My mother pressed the mug to her chest.
“He wanted to tell you.”
“He wrote that he wanted to tell me. That’s not the same.”
“No.”
That word belonged to her now.
The Drawer With the Batteries
The folder in Dad’s closet had a false bottom.
I found it Sunday afternoon after my mother finally opened the door. She stood behind me while I took down the shirts one at a time. His work shirts were still arranged by color, blue to gray to white. The black funeral suit hung in a plastic bag.
At the back, behind a stack of old shoe boxes, was a locked metal cashbox.
The key was taped beneath the drawer marked BATTERIES.
Inside were the things he had decided should survive him: Renee’s marriage certificate, Sofia’s birth certificate, copies of every payment, photographs, and one spiral notebook.
He had written in it for four years.
Not a diary. A record.
January 6, 2020: Sofia wants to play shortstop. Need glove.
March 18, 2020: Danielle got promoted. Don’t tell her I saw the announcement online. She hates when I act like I monitor her.
June 2, 2021: Danielle’s test confirms. I am not her father by blood. I remain her father.
Then, below it:
Tell her soon.
The next page:
Not while Linda is having trouble walking.
Another:
Not before Sofia understands why I have to leave.
Another:
Call Walter Pike.
Walter Pike was dead. Two years before Gerald.
There were phone numbers beside his name, all crossed out.
The last entry was dated six days before Dad died.
I have been a coward so long it looks like a personality.
I read that line three times.
At the bottom of the page, he had written my name. Not Danielle. The name he used when I was little.
Dani-girl.
The cashbox also held a sealed envelope addressed to me.
Not the one Renee had given me. This one had my full name and our home address.
Inside was a single sheet.
Dani-girl,
I am sorry I made love into a ledger. I counted what I owed and called that enough.
You are my daughter because I was there. I know that sounds like a man trying to win an argument after losing it. Maybe it is.
Sofia is yours too, if you want her. She knows you as the person in the stories. I told her you were funny because you are, even when you don’t mean to be.
Your mother will tell you the rest. I won’t ask you to forgive either of us.
I wish I had been brave before my heart gave me a deadline.
Dad
There was no photograph. No key. No last instruction.
Just the letter.
My mother was sitting on the floor of the closet, holding his work jacket in her lap. She had found a receipt in the pocket for a tire rotation from 2019. She kept folding it and unfolding it.
“Did he love me?” I asked.
She looked up.
It was a child question. I knew that. I asked it anyway.
“Yes,” she said. “He loved you before he knew the truth. He loved you after. He was just a coward with everybody else.”
I put the letter back in the envelope.
“That’s not enough.”
“No.”
The house made its usual sounds. The furnace starting. A pipe ticking behind the wall. My father’s keys dropping from somewhere, though they were in the bowl by the door and had been since the funeral.
I called Renee.
She answered on the fourth ring.
“Hello?”
“Does Sofia still want me to come back?”
Renee didn’t speak.
“Not today,” I said. “I mean eventually.”
“She does.”
“Tell her I found the purple shoes.”
“They were under the couch.”
“Right.”
A pause.
“Danielle?”
“Yeah.”
“Gerald wasn’t a good husband.”
“I know.”
“He was a good father to Sofia.”
“I know that too.”
She breathed into the phone. “He loved you.”
I looked down at his letter.
“That part is the problem.”
The Orange Mug
I went to 4B the following Wednesday.
Renee let me in wearing a coat over her pajamas. Sofia was at the table doing math homework, chewing the end of a pencil.
She looked up. “You came back.”
“I did.”
“Mom said you might.”
“Your mom was right.”
Sofia slid a worksheet toward me. “Do you know fractions?”
“No.”
She considered that. “Dad knew fractions.”
“He knew a lot of things.”
“Did he know you were funny?”
“Sometimes.”
She smiled and went back to her work.
Renee stood by the counter. The orange mug was there again, full of pencils.
“Your mother left it,” she said.
“She wants you to keep it.”
“Why?”
“Because she hid it, and my father kept finding it.”
Renee picked up a pencil from the mug. “That sounds like him.”
I took the chair beside Sofia.
Her worksheet had a picture of a pizza cut into eight pieces. She had colored three.
“Three-eighths,” I said.
“Obviously.”
“Sorry.”
She pushed the pencil toward me. “Can you check number four?”
I leaned over the paper.
The answer was wrong. I erased it too hard and tore through the page.
Sofia stared at the hole.
“That wasn’t supposed to happen,” I said.
“That’s okay.”
“No, it’s not. Your dad would have used a new sheet.”
“He tore stuff too.”
I looked at her.
She had his habit of tapping the pencil twice before writing. I had never noticed it in the photograph. Maybe I had noticed it and refused to know what it meant.
Renee put the orange mug between us.
“Gerald told me your mother hated this.”
“She did.”
“Why did she give it to me?”
I turned the mug in my hands. The old logo cracked under my thumb.
“Maybe she finally got tired of finding it.”
Sofia lifted her worksheet. “Is three out of eight right?”
“Yes.”
“Then fix number four.”
I picked up the pencil.
The answer was seven-eighths. I wrote it in the torn space, crooked and too dark.
On the refrigerator, beneath a magnet shaped like a taco, was a photograph of Gerald with Sofia on his shoulders.
Beside it, Renee had taped a new picture.
It was me, sitting at the table with a purple-haired horse between us, holding the pencil like I knew what I was doing.
I didn’t.
But Sofia leaned closer to see what I wrote, and the orange mug stayed between our elbows.
If you’re still in the mood for a compelling read, you might enjoy My Sister Walked Into Court Carrying the Folder I Sent Her or perhaps The Man in the Army Cap Wasn’t There by Accident, and for another intriguing story, check out The Name on Her Credit Card Wasn’t the Name I Needed.
