I pressed my fingers against my forehead. She had given me another explanation to test. I hated that I was doing it again, looking at the letters on my screen and trying to imagine a stranger’s hand.
Owen stood up.
“I have a photograph, Ruth,” he said. “Give me a minute.”
He went into the next room. Mom said my name twice through the speaker. I told her to wait.
Owen returned with an envelope and took out a print. He showed me the back first. A date had been written there, the same date as the funeral guestbook. Then he turned it over and laid it in front of me.
Mom stood beside Owen and Clara’s coffin.
Her face was clear. Her hand rested on Owen’s arm. I knew the coat she wore. There was no need to enlarge anything or compare signatures.
For a few seconds I stared at her hand. She had reached out to comfort him. She had stood close enough to that coffin to touch it.
I had been alive somewhere that day, doing ordinary things.
“Daniel?” Mom said.
I couldn’t answer her yet.
“Why didn’t you call me?” I asked Owen.
It came out as an accusation. His shoulders shifted, and I regretted it before he spoke. These were his family’s records. He had let me into his kitchen, and I was demanding an explanation from him because the person I wanted to ask was safely inside my phone.
“Your mother said you knew,” he said.
Mom made a sound on the line.
Owen looked at the phone but kept speaking to me.
“I asked about you. She said you’d been told about the accident, but you didn’t want any further contact.”
“With you?”
“With us. Our family. I understood that to include Clara’s funeral.”
I pushed my chair back, then stayed seated.
“You thought I chose not to come.”
“Yes.” He rubbed his thumb along the edge of the envelope. “You’d broken up. We were grieving. It hurt, but I wasn’t going to chase you and ask you to explain yourself.”
I could understand that. It was horrible how easily I could understand it.
He had believed I wanted to be left alone. I had spent years trying to find a way back to a conversation nobody thought I wanted.
“I only found out on Saturday,” I said.
“I believe you.”
I looked at the photograph again. Owen had kept it all these years. I left it where he had put it.
“Mom. There’s a clear picture of you beside the coffin.”
“Daniel, let’s talk at home.”
“No. Here.”
I looked at Owen. “If that’s all right with you.”
He nodded once.
“Come here,” I told her. “I want you to look at it with us.”
I gave her the address while Owen put the guestbook beside the photograph. Neither belonged to me. I kept my hands on my knees and waited for her answer.
“All right,” Mom said. “I’ll come.”
She arrived forty minutes later and stayed standing beside Owen’s kitchen table. Her handbag hung from her shoulder. She looked at the photograph, then at the guestbook.
“Sit down,” I said.
“I can see it from here.”
“Then tell me when you found out Clara was dead.”
She pulled out a chair but didn’t sit. “Before the funeral.”
Owen rested his hands on the closed envelope. I watched Mom’s face, waiting for some correction that would make this smaller.
“All eighteen years?” I asked.
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“You had your scholarship examinations. You’d worked so hard. I thought if you heard about the accident, you might throw everything away.”
“You could have told me afterward.”
“I meant to.”
“But you didn’t.”
“No.” She sat down at last. “Then you were getting on with things. Every time I thought about telling you, I would have had to explain why I hadn’t told you before.”
I remembered asking her whether she knew anyone who still heard from Clara’s family. Mom had suggested looking abroad.
“You said she might be overseas.”
“Yes.”
“You watched me search.”
“I thought you would stop eventually.” She started rubbing the handbag strap between her fingers. “I couldn’t face telling you what I’d done.”
I had wanted a reason I could argue with. Something I could disprove and make her take back. Instead she had described eighteen years of choosing the easier conversation.
“The person who supposedly told you last week?” I asked.
“There wasn’t anyone.”
“And the other Ruth who signed?”
Mom shook her head.
Owen turned the photograph toward her. “You told me he didn’t want to hear from us.”
