“I’m not comfortable using appearance as identification.”
“Does she have a scar below her left knee?”
Dana paused.
“I can ask.”
“No. Forget it.”
There was only one way.
I drove to Richmond.
Rebecca had broken her left leg when she was nine because I dared her to jump from the roof of our father’s toolshed.
The bone came through the skin.
I remembered the screaming more clearly than the blood.
Dad carried her to the truck while I ran behind them barefoot, convinced I’d killed her.
She kept the scar.
The woman in room 417 had it.
I saw it below the edge of her hospital gown before I saw her face properly.
Twelve years changed more than I expected.
Her hair, once almost to her waist, stopped at her chin and was streaked prematurely with gray.
She was thinner.
Her nose looked slightly crooked, as if it had been broken.
There were fine lines around her mouth.
But she had Dad’s hands.
Long fingers.
Crooked little finger.
The right thumbnail she always destroyed when nervous.
She was destroying it now.
“Ellie.”
“Don’t.”
She stopped.
I remained by the door.
“You don’t get to call me that yet.”
Her eyes lowered.
“Okay.”
I had prepared questions during the drive.
They vanished.
Instead I said, “Show me your knee.”
She pulled the blanket aside.
There it was.
A white uneven scar.
I felt nauseated.
“Anyone could know about that.”
“I suppose.”
“What was inside Dad’s red toolbox that Mom never knew about?”
Her eyes lifted.
“His cigarettes.”
“What kind?”
“Camels.”
“Where?”
“Under the removable tray.”
“What else?”
Rebecca almost smiled.
“The Christmas present you bought Marcus when you were seventeen.”
My face burned.
“Stop.”
“You asked.”
I’d hidden a box of condoms there because Mom searched our bedrooms.
Only Rebecca knew.
I dragged the visitor’s chair backward and sat.
“Who died?”
Rebecca’s expression changed.
