The name from the photograph.
Mara Vale.
I hid the notes inside an old cookbook.
For the first time in my marriage, silence was no longer surrender.
I was gathering courage.
I simply did not yet know what to do with it.
The knock came on a rainy evening almost exactly one year after Theo left.
Warren was still at work.
I opened the front door and forgot how to breathe.
Theo stood on the porch.
He was thinner, his hair longer, and there was a faint scar above his eyebrow.
A newborn baby slept against his chest in a gray blanket.
Beside his feet sat a battered brown suitcase.
Brass corners.
One broken buckle.
The faded initials E.M. stamped beneath the handle.
My mother’s initials.
I gripped the doorframe.
“Where did you get that?”
Theo looked down at the suitcase.
“So you recognize it.”
“Your father told me it burned.”
“I know.”
The baby stirred.
Theo adjusted the blanket automatically.
“Can we come inside?”
I stepped aside.
In the living room, Theo laid the baby in a portable basket.
She was tiny.
A patch of dark hair covered the top of her head.
“Whose child is she?” I asked.
Theo sat on the edge of the couch.
“Her name is Wren.”
“That isn’t what I asked.”
“She belongs to Mara.”
The name struck me.
“The woman in the photograph?”
He nodded.
I looked from him to the baby.
