My stomach turned over.
“Who is she?” I asked.
The waitress didn’t answer. Instead she crouched down, reached beneath the booth, and peeled something loose from the underside of the table.
A small envelope. Held there with tape.
My name was written across the front, in my father’s handwriting.
Rachel.
I went cold all over. “How long has that been there?”
“Your father tapes a new one under here before every date,” she said. “I don’t know what’s in them. I’ve never looked.”
I reached for it.
“Please don’t open that.”
I turned around.
A woman was standing near the bar. Mid-sixties, silver hair pinned back, a blue coat, both hands wrapped tight around a handbag like she might need to run. She was looking at me with an expression I couldn’t read.
I looked from her to the photograph on the wall. And then back.
