Then I heard movement inside.
A floorboard creaked.
The dog stood.
My stomach tightened for reasons I couldn’t explain.
The door creaked open a few inches, and I stopped walking entirely.
Standing in the doorway was someone I never in a hundred years expected to see.
“Ms. Diane?”
I stared at her.
It took me several seconds to place the face.
“Sadie?”
Her eyes widened.
Sadie had dated Caleb during his last year of high school.
She had been 17 then. Caleb had been 18.
For almost a year, she had been everywhere.
At our dinner table.
On the couch during movie nights.
Sitting beside Caleb on the back steps while they whispered about whatever teenagers believed adults could never understand.
Then they broke up.
Caleb barely talked about it.
A few months later, Sadie disappeared from our lives completely.
Now she stood in front of me, three years older, thinner than I remembered, with her dark hair tied loosely behind her head.
The dog pushed past her legs and walked inside.
Sadie looked from him to me.
“What are you doing here?”
I swallowed.
“I followed your dog.”
Her expression changed.
She glanced toward the house.
Then back at me.
“You followed Jasper?”
“Is that his name?”
She nodded slowly.
I almost laughed from sheer confusion.
“He’s been sitting at Caleb’s grave.”
Sadie’s face went pale.
For a second, she said nothing.
Then she opened the door wider.
“You should come inside.”
Every instinct told me something was wrong.
Still, I stepped onto the porch.
The front room was small but clean. A worn couch sat against one wall. Children’s books were stacked inside a plastic crate near the television.
I noticed them immediately.
Then I noticed the tiny blue sneakers near the hallway.
My chest tightened.
“Do you have a child?”
Sadie froze.
Jasper walked toward the hallway and disappeared around the corner.
Before she could answer, a small voice called from another room.
“Mommy?”
I looked at Sadie.
She closed her eyes briefly.
Then a little boy came around the corner.
He looked about three years old.
He wore dinosaur pajamas even though it was the middle of the afternoon. His brown hair stuck up on one side.
He stopped when he saw me.
I forgot how to breathe.
There was something about his face.
Something painfully familiar.
His eyes.
The shape of his mouth.
The way one eyebrow lifted slightly higher than the other.
