Phần I
The shadow under the door didn't move.
Nora sat on the closet floor with the bracelet in her fist and the photograph pressed against her chest, and she listened to someone breathing on the other side of the wood. Slow. Heavy. A man's breathing.
Then the handle turned.
"I thought it might be you," her father said.
Richard Whitfield stood in the doorway in a gray robe, his reading glasses pushed up on his forehead. In the yellow lamplight he looked older than he had at dinner. He looked at the hatbox. At the scarves on the floor. At the photograph in her hands.
He didn't seem angry. That was the worst part. He seemed tired, like a man who had been waiting a very long time for a knock he knew was coming.
"Dad," Nora said. "Who is Charlotte?"
Richard stepped inside and closed the door behind him. He lowered himself onto the velvet bench where Diane sat to put on her shoes, and for a while he just looked at the photo.
"She was your sister," he said finally.
"Was."
"She came too early. Eight weeks. Her lungs weren't ready." He rubbed his thumb along the edge of the bench. "Your mother sat in that NICU every day for three months. Every single day. She wouldn't let me take her home to sleep."
"And then?"
Richard didn't answer.
"Dad. And then what?"
"And then your mother lost a child." His voice cracked on the last word, just slightly. "Don't make her lose another one, Nora. Please."
He held out his hand. After a long moment, Nora gave him the photograph. She did not give him the bracelet. He noticed, and he didn't ask for it.
At the door, he stopped.
"If you ask me again," he said, without turning around, "I'll lie to you. I don't want to have to do that. So don't ask me again."