“When I came to find you all those years ago, Carol answered the door.
She told me you had already moved on.
That you were engaged to someone else and didn’t want any contact.”
I stared at her.
“That’s not true,” I said.
“I never said that.
I never stopped thinking about you.”
Anna nodded slowly, like she had already made her peace with it long ago.
“I know that now,” she said quietly.
“But I believed her.
I had no reason not to.”
My chest felt hollow.
Thirty-six years.
Carol had known.
She had looked me in the eye every single day and never said a word.
“There’s more,” Anna said.
She stood up and walked to a drawer in the hallway.
When she came back, she was holding an old envelope.
