Chapter 2
The photograph didn't move in Dan's hand.
Neither did Dan.
The cicadas filled the space where the lawn should have been talking.
Then Whitney found her voice.
"That picture is old," she said.
"She's eight years old. She doesn't know what she's holding."
Dan didn't look away from her.
"She got it out of your car."
"Three weeks ago."
Whitney laughed.
It came out quick and bright and wrong.
"Kids take things, Dan."
"She's been digging around in my car for weeks."
Then she turned to face the folding chairs.
Her gown swept the dry grass.
"Y'all have known me your whole lives."
"You know I've raised that child like my own."
"A year," Dan said.
"One year."
Whitney's jaw tightened.
"A year is a long time when nobody else wants the job."
The sentence landed and sat there in the sun.
Then the woman in pearl gray rose from the second row.
Whitney's mother. Small, careful, always right.
"Dan, honey," she said.
"This is not the day for this."
"The child is upset. Children say things they've heard."
The room nodded.
It nodded the way a room nods when it wants to be somewhere else.
Dan's crew shifted in their work boots.
For one long second the whole lawn leaned Whitney's way.
Whitney stepped in close and dropped her voice for him alone.
"I have a lawyer. A good one."
"You want to fight me over that girl?"
"You'll lose."
Dan didn't answer that.
He just held the picture, and her hand stayed on his wrist.
Then somebody moved at the back of the lawn.
The woman in lavender came up the side aisle.
Old. Stooped. Thick glasses.
A cardigan in ninety degrees.
She carried the worn leather purse in both hands.
"Ruby Dell," Whitney said.
"You don't need to get into this."
Ruby Dell stopped beside Dan.
"I've seen your car, Whitney."
The lawn went quiet a second time.
"At Sunnybrook Care Center," Ruby said.
"In Springfield."
"Four times since spring."
Whitney's chin came up.
"I work there."
"Activities. You know that."
Ruby nodded slowly.
"I do."
"But you told me you were at a conference that Tuesday."
Whitney's mouth opened.
Nothing came out.
Dan turned the picture over.
The back was plain white except for one small gray stamp.
MAR 14.
This year.
Not five years old.
Not even six months.
He held it up so the front row could read it.
The color left Whitney's face from the top down, like a lamp going off.
And the small things came back to Dan all at once.
Whitney offering to help Emmie fix her memory of her mother.
Whitney snapping at the fridge, at old pictures, at anything with Josie in it.
Whitney going quiet and strange since spring.
Emmie asking him twice why Whitney didn't like her.
Dan turned the picture back around.
He looked at his wife's gray eyes.
"Whitney."
"How do you know her?"
Whitney shook her head fast.
"I don't."
"It's a picture. People take pictures."
Ruby Dell opened her purse.
She took out a folded page, soft along the creases, like it had been carried a long while.
"My sister was at Sunnybrook," she said.
"Before she passed. I went every week."
"I saw Whitney sign in every time."
"One day I asked the girl at the desk for an old sheet."
"She gave me one."
Ruby unfolded it.
A visitor sign-in page, one month gone.
Names, times, and who they came to see.
In one line, small and even:
Whitney Cole.
And beside it, in the very same hand:
Josie Pruitt.
First visit. Before she got careful.
Dan read the name.
Then he read it again.
His wife's name.
Not a Jane Doe.
Not a stranger.
Josie Pruitt, in Whitney's handwriting, on a page nobody was ever supposed to see.
The hard press of the pen.
The same loops as the note in his other hand.
Whitney let go of everything at once.
Dan looked up at her.
"You wrote her name," he said.
"You've known my wife was alive."
Whitney didn't answer.
She just stood in the sun with her mouth open.
And that was the answer.