I almost objected.
Then the words caught up with me.
“The child?”
Lucas nodded.
“The baby.”
“But this was 2005.”
“Yes.”
“She wouldn’t have been a baby.”
“No. She would have been eighteen.”
I looked at the photograph again.
A baby born in September 1987.
Thirty-nine years old now.
Somewhere.
Perhaps.
“What risk?”
“Marianne wouldn’t explain.”
I rubbed my forehead.
“This is impossible.”
Douglas watched me.
“I know.”
“No, you don’t. I walked in here expecting…” I stopped.
Expecting what?
A final goodbye?
An old love?
A simple explanation for an old heartbreak?
“I don’t even know what I expected.”
“I wanted to see you.”
Douglas’s voice was barely audible.
“Whatever else happened, that part was simple.”
I looked at him.
He smiled.
“I promised I’d find you when we were sixty.”
My tears returned.
“You cut it close.”
“I always was bad with deadlines.”
“You once turned in a history paper six weeks late.”
