There was a pair of men’s sneakers in the hallway. Expensive. Neatly placed against the wall.
I stood looking at them for a moment.
My husband must have a guest, I thought, and set my bag down.
Then I heard my daughter’s voice from the kitchen.
“Mom? You’re home? Come in, I want you to meet someone.”
The Kitchen
My daughter Sophia is twenty-three. She has her father’s dark eyes and my stubbornness and a laugh that fills whatever room she’s in. She had been seeing someone for several months, she’d mentioned — someone serious, she’d said, someone she wanted us to meet when the time was right.
I walked into the kitchen.
He was standing beside her.
The same dark eyes. The same easy posture. The same face I had watched at sunrise three days ago on a beach that now felt like it existed in a different lifetime.
Daniel looked at me, and I watched — in the space of a fraction of a second — every color leave his face.
