Tell him.’ Tell me what?”
She reached for the back of a dining chair but didn’t sit down.
“Nora was my sister.”
I looked again at the little girl beside me.
Something shifted at the edge of my memory.
Purple glasses.
A laugh.
A book lying open across two sets of knees.
But each image disappeared before I could hold onto it.
“Your sister?”
“My half-sister. She was much younger than me.”
“Why am I in a picture with her?”
Claire finally looked directly at me.
“Because you were friends.”
The answer should have made things clearer.
Instead, everything became more confusing.
For six months, I’d believed I knew exactly how Claire and I had entered each other’s lives.
I was 25 and almost ready to give up on dating apps entirely.
Claire was 45. She had seemed different from the first message she sent me. Direct. Funny. Completely sure
