Chapter 6: The Truck from Aunt Brooke

I got up off the couch and took the card out of his hand.

I put it back on the fridge, under the magnet shaped like a taco, exactly where it had been.

"You don't get to read my refrigerator," I said, "and call my son yours."

"You lied about his age."

"You left a note on a hotel pad that said you'd find me."

"And you didn't."

I folded my arms so he wouldn't see my hands.

"He took his first steps right there, holding the dishwasher handle. You don't get those back by reading a card."

Abe looked at the floor.

When he looked up, his eyes were wet, and he wasn't hiding it.

"I went back to that hotel the same night," he said. "They told me you'd checked out at noon and paid cash."

"I did pay cash."

"There was no name on the room. You'd given them a credit card for incidentals and they wouldn't show it to me."

"So you gave up."

"I paid a man to find you. It took him three months."

His jaw worked.

"He brought me back a photo of you coming out of a church in a white dress."

"He said you'd married a dentist in Milwaukee and you'd asked him to tell me to leave you alone."

I stared at him.

"I've never been married."

"I know that now."

"I've never been to Milwaukee for longer than a Bucks game."

"I know that now too."

He said it very quietly.

The refrigerator hummed between us.

"Who was the man?" I asked.

"Somebody I trusted."

"Do you still trust him?"

He thought about it, and that was the worst part, that he had to think.

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