“You could have called later.”
“I know.”
“You’ve said that twice.”
“I can say it a third time.”
Claire smiled despite herself.
“Don’t.”
There was warmth in the silence that followed.
Not romance.
Not yet, and perhaps not ever.
Just recognition.
A piece of an old friendship being carefully returned.
Like a wallet found beneath a bus bench.
Miriam Bell had retired eight years earlier.
She was seventy-six and lived forty minutes outside the city.
When Sofia reached her, Miriam remembered Eleanor immediately.
“Of course I remember her,” she said. “Eleanor Bennett never entered a room quietly, even when she didn’t say a word.”
Two days later, they visited her.
Ruby came because Miriam insisted.
“I want to meet Eleanor’s granddaughter.”
Miriam lived in a small white house surrounded by hydrangeas.
She opened the door before they knocked.
Her silver hair was braided over one shoulder.
