The house from which she had watched Daniel raise our children and tend to his trees year after year.
“If you weren’t having an affair with him, then why come back here? Why watch our family for nine years? Why steal every piece of fruit from his garden twelve days after he died?”
For once, Monica had no immediate answer.
Her eyes shifted toward her front door.
It was only a tiny movement.
But I noticed it.
Then the screen door opened.
The young man I’d seen carrying tools into Monica’s house all summer stepped onto the porch.
He wasn’t holding a toolbox now.
“Luke,” Monica said sharply. “Go back inside.”
He ignored her.
I’d seen him several times over the previous few months, but I’d never truly looked at him.
As he walked closer, something about his face bothered me.
Not enough to recognize him.
Just enough to feel strangely familiar.
“She didn’t move back here because she wanted Daniel,” he said.
Monica turned toward him.
“Luke, don’t.”
“He’s gone, Mom. What exactly are we protecting now?”
Mom.
I looked from Monica to the young man.
He appeared to be in his mid-twenties.
My stomach dropped.
Twenty-seven years.
“No,” I whispered.
Luke stopped beside his mother.
“I found out about Daniel three months ago. Mom finally told me his name.”
Monica looked away.
Luke continued.
“I came here because I wanted to meet him. I just didn’t know how to walk up to a stranger and say, ‘You’re the father you never knew you were.’”
“You were waiting all this time?”
He nodded.
“Every week I promised myself I’d finally talk to him. Mom kept saying we needed to be sure. That there would be a better moment.”
His voice trembled slightly.
“Then there wasn’t another moment.”
For a second, something in Luke’s expression looked so much like Daniel whenever he was nervous that I forgot to breathe.
Then Luke said the words.
“Daniel was my father.”
I turned toward Monica.
