I started planning meals she liked. I washed her old blankets. I even bought flowers, though money was still tight and I had no business buying flowers for my own house. I asked her to send pictures of her life there.
« Just one, » I said. « Your school, your room, your friends, anything. »
« You’ll see when I get there. »
« Why are you being secretive? »
« I’m not. I’m just busy. »
She dodged me for a week. Then, exactly seven days before her flight, my phone buzzed while I was folding laundry.
It was a photo.
My daughter stood on a London sidewalk in a dark coat, looking pale but smiling. Beside her was a man with silver hair, deep lines in his face, and the kind of expensive overcoat I could recognize even from a blurry picture. He had one hand resting lightly on her back.
I stared at that image so long that my vision blurred.
He was not a professor. He was not a family friend. He was not just « someone from the hospital. »
