Mr. Caleb did not look away. He received every word. His face did not try to manage its expression.
“She died,” he said very quietly.
“Yes.”
He pressed his hands together tightly. His eyes went to the floor for a moment, just a moment, and then came back.
“I did not know that,” he said.
“There is a lot you did not know,” Rebecca said. “Because you chose not to know.”
The words were not cruel. They were not shouted. They were simply true, said in the same quiet, direct voice she used for everything. And that somehow made them land harder than any shout could have.
Mr. Caleb said nothing. He simply sat with it.
Rebecca, who had learned patience in harder schools than most, let him.
The clock in the hallway ticked. The room had gone fully dark outside the windows. The sitting room lamp threw its warm yellow light across the 2 of them, the man and the young woman sitting across from each other in leather chairs with the low table between them.
After a long silence, Rebecca spoke again.
“I used to watch the other children on Father’s Day,” she said.
She had not planned to say this. It simply came.
“At church, when the pastor asked fathers to stand, I used to look at the floor. I told myself it was fine, that lots of children didn’t have fathers, that it didn’t mean anything.” She paused. “I told myself that for a very long time.”
Mr. Caleb’s jaw moved, a small, tight movement.
“When I was in school,” she continued, “a teacher asked us to draw a picture of our family. I drew myself and my mother. And then I looked at the empty space beside us, and I didn’t know what to put there.”
She looked at him.
