“What?”
“Mom confronted him about the hotel room key. He said it wasn’t what it looked like.”
“Is anything in your family ever what it looks like?”
“No.”
For once, he didn’t defend them.
I opened the photograph again.
There was something I had overlooked.
The person standing beside Vanessa was partially turned away.
When I first saw it, I had assumed it was Charles.
But now I zoomed in.
The sleeve.
The wrist.
A silver watch.
Not Charles’s.
I had seen that watch hundreds of times at Thanksgiving dinners.
“Daniel.”
“What?”
“The person in the photo with Vanessa isn’t your father.”
“What?”
“It’s Patricia.”
Silence.
I enlarged the image.
Patricia was holding the envelope.
Vanessa stood beside her.
Charles was twenty feet away talking to a guest.
I sent Daniel the photograph.
He opened it.
“Oh God.”
“What?”
“That watch.”
“I know.”
“It was Grandma Eleanor’s.”
