“That’s where my daddy goes. Mommy says I can draw him when I know what he looks like.”
I felt an unexpected sadness.
“You haven’t met him?”

The Story Continues After Part 2

PART 3

Willa shook her head, then bent Captain Buttons’s ears between her fingers.

“Mommy says he doesn’t know about me yet.

She says that’s a grown-up story.” She wasn’t accusing anybody.

Her voice was merely curious, the way children ask why leaves turn red.

I watched the drawing tremble in my hand.

Outside the window, the wing cut through a low bank of clouds.

I reminded myself that thousands of children had gray eyes and dimples.

Families resemble strangers all the time.

I had no right to turn a child’s conversation into a detective investigation.

“And what’s your mommy’s name?” I asked, trying to keep my voice ordinary.

“Elena Hartwell.

But Aunt Rosie calls her Ellie when she’s being silly.

Are you okay?

You look like you swallowed a lemon.”

Five years fell away.

I heard an apartment door closing in Chicago.

I smelled the lemon soap Elena used in our kitchen and remembered her asking me, through tears she tried to hide, whether I would ever choose a life that left room for another person.