Mr. Baron looked at me.
“He made me wait until today to tell you who he really was.”
I opened the envelope.
Inside was a letter written in Carl’s careful handwriting.
The first words made my heart stop.
“Selena,
Our meeting was not an accident.”
I read the sentence again.
Then again.
My knees suddenly felt weak.
Mr. Baron caught my elbow as the letter slipped from my hand.
Our meeting was not an accident.
Carl’s letter continued.
“Before I became your husband, I was the awkward guy who lived two houses down and spent every autumn hoping you would stop by Arthur’s workshop.”
I couldn’t breathe.
Two houses down.
Arthur’s workshop.
A narrow alley.
The smell of sawdust and bicycle grease.
Memory came rushing back so quickly that it almost hurt.
“Silver Oak Street,” I whispered.
Mr. Baron nodded.
I had lived there until I was 14.
Then my parents died in a car accident.
Everything changed overnight.
I entered foster care.
Strangers packed our house while I sat in a county office clutching a trash bag filled with clothes.
I never went back.
“I knew a guy,” I said slowly.
“Quiet. Dark hair.”
Mr. Baron nodded.
“Carl.”
“No.”
The denial came too quickly.
The Carl I remembered was a quiet boy who lived with his grandfather.
He repaired bicycles behind their house.
The man I had married was different.
He laughed easily.
He argued passionately about books.
He had made me feel comfortable from the moment we met.
“I knew a guy,” I repeated.
Mr. Baron lowered himself into the chair across from me.
“Carl lost both parents when he was seven,” he said. “Arthur raised him.”
I remembered Arthur.
His cracked hands.
His gentle voice.
His workshop.
I remembered bringing him soup once when he had the flu because my mother had told me nobody should have to eat alone while sick.
And then I remembered Carl.
He had stood behind the workshop door watching me.
More memories began returning.
Arthur’s handmade birdhouses.
The smell of sawdust.
The narrow alley beside the workshop.
One Saturday afternoon, an impatient customer had confronted Carl about a bicycle.
Carl tried to explain something.
But his stutter became worse.
The customer lost patience.
He yanked the bicycle out of Carl’s hands and walked away.
Carl disappeared behind the workshop before anyone could say another word.
I found him sitting on the curb near the alley.
I didn’t tell him it wasn’t his fault.
I didn’t give him a speech.
I simply sat down beside him.
Then I started talking about a stray kitten I’d found beneath our porch.
I told him the kitten hated milk, loved shoelaces and had bitten my father.
I kept talking.
By the time we walked back toward Arthur’s workshop, Carl was smiling.
I had forgotten that afternoon.
Carl hadn’t.
