“Oh my gosh.”
“One of them mentions lemon cake.”
“I brought it to the house,” she whispered. “You loved that lemon cake from the bakery on Wells Street.”
“He never gave it to me.”
Clara sat down slowly and touched the plastic sleeve with two fingers.
“I wrote so many,” she said. “At first every week. Then every birthday. Then only when I couldn’t stand not writing.” She looked up. “I thought you threw them away.”
“I never saw them.”
Her face changed then. Something inside her released—not all of it, but enough for breath.
“He made us strangers,” she said.
“He tried.”
Clara looked at me through wet lashes.
“We’re not strangers.”
“No,” I said. “We’re not.”
That was the emotional truth the day gave us: not justice, not clarity, not answers wrapped neatly in ribbon. But my sister and I sitting at a scratched kitchen table, reading old letters aloud while rain blurred the city outside.
