“What is your daughter’s name?”
For a moment you think she hasn’t heard you.
Her fingers tighten around the worn wooden handle of the broom lying across her lap. Her jaw works once, twice, as if the answer has been locked behind her teeth so long it no longer remembers how to come out cleanly. Rainwater slides from the edge of the umbrella in silver threads. Her sweater smells faintly of soap, damp wool, and the sharp lemon scent of cleaning solution.
Then she says it.
“Andrea.”
The air leaves your lungs.
Not dramatically. Nothing in life ever happens as theatrically as people imagine. There’s no lightning strike, no divine chorus, no sudden music swelling under the moment. Just a small old woman on a wet bench saying your name as if she has been carrying it like a lit candle through thirty years of wind.
You let out a quiet laugh before you can stop yourself.
