I pointed to the back booth. “Sit down.”
He sat like a man reporting for judgment.
I slid into the seat across from him. Hope stirred beside me. “Start talking.”
His eyes filled so fast, he had to look down. “She wanted to come home so many times.”
I held the edge of the table. “Then why didn’t she?”
“Start talking.”
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“Because of your husband.” He said it without heat, which somehow made it worse. “After she called that first time, she cried for hours. He told her if she came back with me, she’d be throwing her life away. He said if she loved you, she’d stay gone and let you move on.”
I shut my eyes.
Andy kept going. “I told her maybe he was bluffing. She said he wasn’t.”
“What happened to my daughter, Andy?”
He broke then. Just one hand over his mouth, shoulders shaking once before he got himself back together.
“What happened to my daughter, Andy?”
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“Hope was born three weeks ago,” he said. “Jennifer had a bleed after delivery. They said they stopped it. They said she was okay. She wasn’t.”
I couldn’t feel my feet.
“Before she…” He swallowed. “Before the end, she told me if anything ever happened, Hope was to come to you. She made me promise.”
Behind me, Hope made a sleepy little sound.
“Jennifer had a bleed after delivery.”
I turned and touched her blanket with one finger. When I looked back at Andy, he was watching me with a kind of exhausted gratitude that made my chest ache.
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“What was she like?” I asked. “When she was with you?”
His face softened.
“She laughed with her whole face,” he said. “Like she couldn’t help it. She still talked about you, mostly when she was tired. Little things. ‘My mom hummed when she baked.’ ‘My mom could get any stain out.’ ‘My mom always knew when I was lying.’ She missed you all the time.”
“What was she like?”
“Why did you leave Hope?” I whispered. “Why not come to me yourself?”
