“How do you feel about that?” I asked carefully.
Hannah looked down at her hands.
“I don’t know,” she said. “I mean, I’m mad. Of course I’m mad. But…”
She looked up at me.
“But she never really forgot me, did she? She sent all those cards. Every birthday. Every Christmas. For years. She was just… I don’t know. Scared, maybe. Or messed up. But she never forgot me.”
The room went completely quiet.
Mark looked at me. I looked at my coffee cup.
“No, honey,” I said finally. “I don’t think she forgot you.”
What else could I say?
Crystal came to visit two weeks later. She drove all the way from Las Vegas, where she lived now, with her third husband. She stayed in a hotel downtown. Hannah brought her over to our house for dinner on a Sunday.
She was charming. I’ll give her that. She was funny and bright and sparkly, and she laughed at all of Mark’s jokes, even though he barely made any. She told stories about Hannah as a baby that I’d never heard. She brought Hannah a beautiful silk scarf and a bottle of very expensive perfume.
