Samantha turned toward her mother.
“I’ll meet you at the restaurant tonight.”
Margaret Hayes caught her daughter’s hand.
“Please don’t disappear.”
The words were soft.
And unexpectedly painful.
Samantha looked at her mother.
“I won’t.”
“Promise?”
She almost reminded Margaret that she was forty years old and did not owe anyone an account of where she went.
Instead she looked at the worry in her mother’s face.
“I promise.”
Robert said nothing.
Samantha walked toward the side exit.
She made it halfway there before she heard footsteps behind her.
“Samantha.”
She stopped.
Her father.
For a moment she considered continuing.
Then she turned.
Robert Hayes had always seemed larger in uniform.
When Samantha was a child, the sight of him walking through an airport in Navy dress blues had made her believe her father belonged to some larger and more important world.
At sixty-eight, wearing a dark civilian suit, he seemed smaller than the man in her memories.
Not weak.
Simply human.
“What?” she asked.
His eyes went toward the folder.
“Did you lie to us?”
It was such a Robert Hayes question that Samantha almost smiled.
