Chapter 6: The Man at the Table
Audrey took nine days.
On the ninth evening she came to find me in the living room and said, simply, "I'm ready."
I called Daniel the next morning.
He answered on the second ring.
"She wants to meet you," I said.
A silence.
Then: "When?"
"Saturday.
Here.
Neutral ground for her."
"Of course." Another pause.
"Mrs.
Calloway — thank you.
For giving me the chance."
"Don't thank me yet," I said.
"She's going to have questions.
Hard ones.
Answer them honestly, even if the honest answer isn't good."
"I will."
"And Daniel — if at any point she wants you to leave, you leave.
No argument."
"Understood.
Completely."
Saturday came grey and cool.
I made coffee and set out cups and then felt ridiculous for setting out cups as if this were a normal visit, and put one of them back.
Audrey came downstairs twenty minutes before he was due.
She was wearing jeans and a plain blue shirt — nothing dressed up, nothing deliberately casual.
She sat at the kitchen table and turned her phone over in her hands without looking at it.
"You don't have to do this today," I said.
"I know." She set the phone down.
"I want to."
The knock came at eleven exactly.
I opened the door.
Daniel Marsh was taller than I'd expected from the photograph on his website.
He was wearing a grey jacket, no tie.
His hair had some grey in it at the temples.
He looked like a man who had rehearsed staying calm and was working hard to do it.
He looked past me for just a second before catching himself.
"Mrs.
Calloway." He extended his hand.
I shook it.
"Come in."
He followed me to the kitchen.
Audrey stood up when he came through the door.
They looked at each other across the table — this man of forty-one and this girl of fifteen — and I watched both of them do the same thing at the same moment: look for Hannah in the other person's face.
"Hi," Audrey said.
"Hi." His voice was steady but his hands were at his sides, very still, the way hands go when someone is concentrating on not letting them shake.
"Sit down," she said.
Not unkindly.
Just direct.
He sat.
She sat across from him.
I stayed near the counter.
"I read my mom's letter," Audrey said.
"She said you were a good man."
"She was more generous than I deserved."
"Maybe." Audrey looked at him steadily.
"She also said she made a mistake keeping you away.
Do you think that was a mistake?"
He didn't hesitate.
"Yes.
But the original mistake was mine.
I let my father's opinion matter more than it should have.
Your mother paid for that.
You paid for that.
I've had fifteen years to understand how wrong that was."
"What did your father say about her?"
A pause.
"Things that weren't true.
That she wasn't the right kind of person.
That she was only interested in money."
"Was she?"
"No.
She was the most straightforward person I'd ever met." Something shifted in his face.
"She told me exactly who she was from the first conversation we had.
I knew exactly who she was.
I just wasn't brave enough to defend it."
Audrey was quiet for a moment.
"That's the same word she used," she said.
"In the letter.
Brave."
He looked down at the table.
"I know," he said softly.
"Did she tell you she was going to write it?"
"She called me the night before she went to the hospital.
She told me she was leaving something for you.
She said she wanted you to have the choice." He looked up.
"She said she was sorry for taking it away from you for so long.
I told her she had nothing to be sorry for.
I meant that."
Audrey picked up the photograph from where she'd placed it on the table between them.
She slid it toward him.
He looked at it for a long moment.
His jaw tightened once.
Then he looked back up at her.
"She was laughing because I'd just dropped an entire tray of food in a restaurant," he said.
"She thought it was the funniest thing she'd ever seen.
She talked about it for weeks."
Audrey looked at the photograph.
Then something happened to her face — not quite a smile, not quite tears.
Something between the two.
"That sounds like her," she said.
"From what Grandma's told me."
She looked at me.
I nodded.
"It does."
The three of us sat in the quiet kitchen.
The coffee went cold.
Nobody moved to refill it.
"I'm not ready to call you anything," Audrey said finally.
"I don't know what I want this to be yet."
"That's fair."
"But I don't want you to disappear again."
He held her gaze.
"I won't.
I promise you that."
Audrey nodded once.
Then she stood up, picked up the photograph, and said she was going to take a walk.
She went out the back door.
Daniel and I sat in the kitchen without speaking for a moment.
Then he put his face in his hands.
He didn't make a sound.
May you like
But his shoulders moved once.
I got up and refilled his coffee without asking.
