Then opened the photograph again.
I kept studying Nancy.
That was the part I couldn’t understand.
She wasn’t afraid.
She wasn’t uncomfortable.
She wasn’t behaving like a child standing beside someone she’d just met.
She was pressed against his chest.
Completely at ease.
Dorothy hadn’t simply lied about where they were going.
She had taken our daughter to meet someone who apparently required no introduction.
At 10:06, I heard the front door unlock.
Dorothy entered first.
Then Nancy.
Holding the stranger’s hand.
He looked younger in person.
Mid-twenties, maybe.
His eyes were swollen and red.
Nancy released his hand when she saw me.
“Dad, please don’t be mad at Mom.”
I looked at Dorothy.
“What have you told her?”
“Mark—”
The stranger stepped forward.
“I’m sorry you had to find out about me this way.”
I stared at him.
“Apparently, I’m the only one who didn’t know.”
His eyes dropped.
I opened the front door.
“Leave.”
“Mark.”
Dorothy caught my arm.
I pulled away.
“Not now.”
She looked directly at me.
“Before you make him leave, you need to hear a story that started twenty-five years ago.”
“Dorothy—”
“Please.”
Nancy edged closer to her.
Dorothy immediately crouched beside her.
“You haven’t done anything wrong, sweetheart. Go upstairs and get ready for bed.”
“Will you come up?”
“Yes.”
Only after Nancy disappeared upstairs did I close the door.
Dorothy sat down.
She kept twisting her wedding ring.
I remained standing.
Then she started talking.
“When I was sixteen, my mother found my pregnancy test.”
I stared at her.
“What?”
Dorothy looked at the stranger.
Then back at me.
And took me twenty-five years into the past.
She had been sixteen.
In love with a boy who waited outside the diner after her shifts so they could walk home together.
They’d split sandwiches.
He always gave her the bigger half.
Then Dorothy discovered she was pregnant.
She planned to tell him.
Her mother found out first.
“Does he know?” her mother asked.
“Not yet. I was going to tell him tomorrow.”
“Give me your phone.”
“Mom—”
“Now.”
Dorothy’s mother called the boy herself.
At least, that’s what Dorothy believed.
Then she packed their belongings and moved Dorothy to another state.
She told Dorothy she’d informed the father about the pregnancy.
