The word felt careful. Chosen. Hidden.
Across from me, my father looked suddenly older.
“Kirsten,” Kenneth said, “there is one more thing in Melinda’s message.”
I could barely speak. “Tell me.”
“She said Connor kept a photograph in his locked desk. A photograph of a little girl.”
My father inhaled sharply.
The rain outside softened, as if the whole world were listening.
Kenneth continued.
“On the back, someone wrote a name.”
I closed my eyes.
“What name?”
He paused.
Then he said it.
“Hope.”
The phone slipped slightly in my hand.
My mother’s sunflower mug sat on the table between the notebook and the photograph, still warm, still full.
Hope.
A name.
A child.
A possibility that had been living somewhere beyond the edge of everything I knew.
And before I could ask another question, my father reached for the photograph of Connor, Dana, and the unknown man.
With trembling hands, he turned it toward the light.
“Kirsten,” he whispered, his face draining of color, “I know where I saw him before the funeral.”
I lowered the phone.
“Where?”
My father looked at me with tears in his eyes.
“He came to the house when you were a baby.”
