“Whose?”
“Caleb’s. When that boy was seven years old, your mother worked for Caleb’s family. She lived in that house. You lived in that house, Emily. You were four, five years old.”
Something shifted inside my memory.
“A big house,” I whispered. “There was a garden. There was a red bicycle.”
“Yes.”
“And a boy. There was a boy who…”
I swallowed.
“He used to run with me.”
Grandpa nodded.
“That was Caleb.”
Suddenly, pieces of my relationship that had once seemed strange no longer felt accidental.
I covered my mouth.
Nora squirmed against Grandpa’s shoulder.
Almost two years.
Two years since the bookstore reading where Caleb had turned toward me in the aisle and spoken my name as though he already knew it.
Two years of coffee, long drives, quiet evenings in his apartment.
None of it had been chance.
