“Don’t turn me into some saintly eight-year-old.”
Claire almost smiled.
“You weren’t. You made her cry once because you said she cheated at Uno.”
“Did she?”
“Absolutely.”
Despite everything, I laughed.
It lasted maybe two seconds.
Then the question I’d been avoiding came back.
“What happened to her?”
Claire pulled out the chair across from me.
“Can I sit?”
I nodded.
She sat down.
“Near the end of that summer, our mom took Nora out of town for specialized treatment. Everybody thought she’d be gone a few weeks.”
My fingers found a scratch carved into the surface of the table.
“And?”
“She got worse.”
My thumb stopped moving over the scratch.
Claire continued quietly.
“She died that winter.”
I stared toward the shelves.
Somewhere behind us, a child laughed.
Neither of us spoke for a while.
Then I asked, “Nobody told me?”
“No.”
“But you knew I existed.”
“Yes.”
“You knew who I was when you saw me on Tinder.”
“Yes.”
“So why then?”
Claire looked down at her hands.
“Because I thought I’d finally been given a chance to tell you.”
I waited.
“I didn’t know your last name for years,” she continued. “I knew Ethan. I knew your mom used to pick you up in a red car. I knew you moved not long after Nora got sick. By the time I thought seriously about finding you, I had almost nothing useful.”
“But eventually you did.”
“Seventeen years later, your face showed up on my phone.”
I rubbed both palms against my jeans.
“And you swiped right.”
“Yes.”
“To tell me Nora died. That was the whole plan?”
“One coffee. Tell you who I was. Tell you what happened. Thank you for being her friend.”
I looked at her.
