“Hi,” she said.
I nearly laughed from shock.
“Hi?”
Her mouth tightened.
“Okay.”
“You disappear for ten years and your opening line is hi?”
“I don’t know what else to say.”
“Neither do I.”
She took one step toward me.
I immediately stepped back.
That hurt her.
Good.
I hated myself for thinking that.
Then I needed proof.
Not medical records.
Not DNA yet.
Something no stranger could have researched.
I asked:
“What did we call the dent in my bedroom wall?”
She stared.
Then her eyes filled.
“The moon.”
My lungs stopped.
When we were eleven, Lily threw a tennis ball inside the house after Dad told us not to.
The ball knocked a crescent-shaped dent into my bedroom wall.
We hid it behind a poster and called it the moon.
Nobody else knew.
I asked another.
“Who broke Mom’s ceramic bowl during the snowstorm?”
“I did.”
