“I’m about forty minutes out, honey.”
“Okay. Just — um — wait outside the employee building when you get here? Don’t come in.”
“Why not?”
I saw the bundle in her arms.
“It’s easier. I’ll come to you.”
“Sophie, is something wrong?”
“No. Nothing’s wrong. I just want to see you.”
I told myself she was being nineteen.
Private. Independent. Growing up.
“Where is her mother?”
***
I pulled into the resort a little before eleven, parked where she asked, and turned the engine off. The lake glittered through the trees. Any second, she’d walk out, and my summer of missing her would be over.
The door opened.
Sophie walked toward my car, and I saw the bundle in her arms before I saw her smile.
A diaper bag hung from her shoulder as it belonged there.
“Are we taking this baby somewhere?”
I got out slowly. “Sophie?”
“Hi, Mom.”
Her voice was small, rehearsed.
