I tried to make the number mean something harmless.

Seven was a common age.

Children could inherit eye colors from people they had never met.

The resemblance might simply be what I wanted or feared to see.

But all those reasonable thoughts collapsed beneath memories I had kept locked away for years.

Seven years earlier, somebody had sent me a photograph while I was stationed away from home.

Lauren was sitting at a restaurant with Patrick, a college friend whose name I had heard but whom I had never met.

The message attached to the picture implied that she was lying to me.