Chapter 4: What Sandra Left Behind
I didn't go back into the reception.
Diane found us in the corridor five minutes later, took one look at Graham's face and mine, and quietly told the guests that we needed a moment.
I heard her through the door, calm and practiced, like she had managed situations like this before.
That thought settled into me like a stone dropping into still water.
Graham and I moved to a small room off the corridor — a storage room, really, with folding chairs stacked against one wall and a table holding leftover programs from the ceremony.
I sat on the edge of the table.
He stood near the door.
"Sandra didn't just leave," he said.
"She disappeared."
I stared at him.
"What does that mean?"
"I mean she was there one morning and gone by afternoon.
No note.
No call.
Millie was four.
I came home from work and Millie was alone in the house.
Sandra had been gone for hours."
"You never told me any of this."
"I know."
"In three years, Graham.
You never once—"
"How do you tell someone that?" His voice rose slightly, then dropped again.
"How do you sit across from someone you love and say, 'By the way, the mother of my child vanished without a word and I have no idea if she's alive or de@d?'"
The last word landed hard.
"Do the police know?" I asked.
"I filed a report.
They investigated.
She'd cleared out her bank account two days before she left.
They decided she left voluntarily."
"But you don't believe that."
He was quiet for a moment.
"I don't know what I believe.
I never heard from her again.
Neither did her family.
Her sister called me for a year asking if I'd heard anything." He sat down on one of the folding chairs.
"After a while the calls stopped."
I thought about Millie.
Four years old, alone in a house, waiting for a mother who never came back.
"What exactly did you tell Millie?" I asked.
"I told her that Sandra had to go away.
That it wasn't Millie's fault.
That some grown-up things were hard to explain."
"And the secret?
What did you tell her to keep secret?"
He rubbed the back of his neck.
"I told her not to tell you about Sandra.
I told her it was a grown-up thing and that I would explain it when the time was right."
"You used your daughter to keep your secret."
"I was trying to protect—"
"Her?
Or yourself?"
He didn't answer.
I looked at the folding programs on the table beside me.
Our names printed on the front.
The date.
A small pressed flower on the cover because Millie had asked for flowers on everything.
"Is there anything else?" I asked.
"Anything else you haven't told me."
He hesitated.
One beat too long.
"Graham."
May you like
"Sandra's sister called me," he said.
"Three weeks ago."
