Still, I stayed silent.
“I thought I was imagining it. So I waited outside the store. I followed from across the street. When she got home, I knocked on the door. Marilyn opened it.”
I didn’t like the part about him following her—and he saw that in my expression.
“I know how that sounds,” he said. “I should have handled it better. But I wasn’t thinking clearly.”
“What happened when Marilyn opened the door?”
He exhaled shakily.
“She looked at me like she’d seen a ghost. Then I saw the little boy. He looks like me too.”
My entire body went still.
“She never told me she was pregnant,” he said. “She had twins.”
I stared at him.
“You’re telling me the little girl is your daughter.”
“And the boy is my son.”
I should have walked away right then.
But instead, I thought about the milk.
The fever.
The worn sweater.
“Why are you telling me this?” I asked.
His expression shifted—less polished, more ashamed.
“Because Marilyn is sick. The boy is sick. And when I got there, the first thing Lucy said was, ‘The lady from the store bought us food.’”
Lucy.
So now the little girl had a name.
