By then, Emma was three.
We had not been good at being young, frightened, and responsible for another person at the same time.
Rachel’s letter continued.
When Emma was born, I wanted to tell David. I wanted to tell him that I had found a retired records clerk who remembered the original maintenance logs. I wanted to tell him that I had copied portions of the investigation before leaving Germany.
But David had begun working over the road. He was building a life around Emma. Every time I saw him, I told myself I would speak after I had one more document, one more witness, one more certainty.
Then certainty became an excuse.
Emma put the page down.
“She knew all this when she left?”
“I don’t know,” I said.
“Did she ever tell you anything?”
“She told me she was tired of watching me pretend the past didn’t matter.”
Emma’s face tightened.
“And what did you say?”
“That I was tired of being treated like a case file.”
The memory came back with uncomfortable clarity. Rachel standing in our kitchen, one hand on the back of a chair, her coat already on. She had asked me to go with her to a meeting with a former investigator. I had said I had a load to deliver and couldn’t keep chasing ghosts.
She had replied that ghosts were all I had left because I refused to face the living.
I had not understood what she meant.
Or perhaps I had.
“Your mother and I both made mistakes,” I said. “She kept things from me. I shut down when she tried to bring them back.”
Emma lowered her gaze.
“Did she stop loving me?”
The question struck with more force than anything else.
I turned fully toward her.
“No.”
“How do you know?”
“Because she called on every birthday, even after you stopped answering. Because she kept your school pictures. Because when you were accepted to the academy, she sent me an email with the subject line ‘She did it.’”
Emma’s eyes filled, but she blinked the tears away.
