She looked down at the cigarette in her hand.
“I was twenty-six,” she said. “I had a four-year-old, and a husband who worked all the time, and I felt like I was disappearing. Like there was nothing left of me. And then I met Rick, and he had a
boat, and a house on the lake, and he made me feel like I was twenty again. And I thought, I’ll go for a few months. I’ll figure myself out. And then I’ll come back.”
She shook her head.
“And then it was a year. And then it was three years. And every year, it got harder. Every year, I thought, she’s not going to remember me. Or if she does, she’s going to hate me. So I just… didn’t.”
“She stood at the mailbox for hours, Crystal,” I said quietly. “On her seventh birthday. She stood there until it got dark.”
