I pulled out a chrome-legged kitchen chair and sat down facing her.

“Frank kept it in the top drawer under his receipt ledger,” I said.

“He told the hospice nurse it was the only thing he took from your apartment that didn’t have legal papers attached to it.”

“He knew where it belonged,” Claire said, her gray-green eyes steady in the sunlight.

“Even when he spent half his life pretending he’d forgotten.”

She slid the plate of apple slices across the yellow Formica toward me.