That question, so simple, shook me more than all the documents on the library table.

I had spent most of my life thinking about Evie as somebody I had lost.

Poppy was already imagining her as somebody who could come over for spaghetti.

“Maybe soon,” I said.

That evening, Evelyn called.

We talked for two hours.

She told me she had been a school librarian, married young, divorced, married again much later.

She had no children of her own.