The Man in the Photograph

Lorenzo reached toward the print, then stopped short of taking it.

"May I?"

Clara handed it over.

Mia watched him with concern.

"Don't bend it. That's Mommy."

"I won't."

He read the inscription twice.

"It's my mother's handwriting."

Clara rubbed her cold fingers together. The date made her a few months old. Lorenzo would have been thirteen.

"How well did you know Rebecca?" she asked.

"Not well. I remember her coming through the kitchen with folders. My father employed her."

"She told me she worked reception before we moved to Albany."

"She may have. I was a child."

It was the first answer that made Clara trust what he was saying. He didn't try to fill the gaps simply because he was accustomed to knowing everything.

Adella came out carrying a basket of fresh table linen.

Lorenzo turned the photograph toward her.

The basket settled onto the table with a soft thump.

"Oh," she said.

Clara stood.

"You recognized my name when you hired me."

Adella didn't look away.

"Bennett is a common name. I wondered. Then I saw the photograph on your phone when you showed Rosa your mother."

"That was months ago."

"Yes."

"And you didn't tell me she had worked here?"

Mia leaned against Clara's leg. Clara lowered her voice, but she couldn't keep the anger out of it.

Adella folded her hands.

"Rebecca asked me not to send this family looking for her. I didn't know whether you knew that. I didn't want your first months here to become an interrogation about your mother."

"You could have asked me."

The older woman nodded slowly.

"I should have."

Lorenzo pulled out a chair.

"Tell us what you actually know."

Adella sat.

She remembered Rebecca as a young woman who checked figures in the back office and brought her own sandwiches wrapped in paper. Eleanor had liked her immediately. They had shared tea in the kitchen, then spent longer and longer hours together over account books.

"There was trouble with an accountant," Adella said. "Rebecca found payments that didn't belong where they were. Your mother was trying to help her, Lorenzo."

"Was that why she was driving the night she died?"

"She meant to meet Rebecca. She called first and told her to stay away."

Clara looked at the photograph.

"I was thirteen when we moved to Albany. Mom said she'd found a better job."

"She had found one," Adella said. "Leaving was still part of keeping you both safe."

"From whom?"

"I wasn't told enough to answer that fairly."

Lorenzo pressed his palms against the table.

"And my father?"

"Knew more than I did. He handled the business afterward. I helped Rebecca find somewhere to stay. That was my part."

Clara stared toward the garden. She had spent eleven months walking past lavender beds that might once have been familiar to her mother.

"Did Eleanor send Christmas cards? With dried lavender inside?"

Adella's eyes softened.

"She did."

Clara remembered Rebecca lifting the flowers out carefully, spreading them on a saucer so they wouldn't crumble.

"There's a box," she said. "A music box. Mom kept those cards in it."

Lorenzo looked at her sharply.

"A silver bird on the lid?"

"Yes."

"My mother had one."

Adella nodded. "She bought two at a little shop in town. One for herself, one for Rebecca."

There was nothing supernatural about it. Clara almost wished there were. A ghost would have been easier to understand than her own mother carrying an entire history she had never mentioned.

She went back to the cottage for her car keys.

Mia followed her from room to room.

"Are we going to Grandma's box?"

"The storage place, sweetheart."

"Is it boring?"

"Very."

Rosa, arriving with a plate of sliced pears, said, "I was going to make sugar flowers this afternoon. I could use someone to tell me whether the blue ones taste different."

Mia looked torn for approximately one second.

Clara crouched beside her.

"I'll be back before dinner. You stay with Rosa, and you tell her before you go anywhere."

"Even the bathroom?"

"Especially if the bathroom is beside Mr. Duca's office."

Mia sighed at the unreasonable restrictions placed upon her life.

Lorenzo waited by Clara's car.

"Do you want me to come?"

She nearly said no out of habit. Then she looked at the photograph in her hand.

"Yes. But I'm driving."

He moved to the passenger side without arguing.

At the storage unit, the fluorescent light hummed above shelves of cardboard boxes. Clara found the one marked MOM behind a folded stroller and two suitcases.

She sat on the concrete floor to open it.

Lorenzo remained by the door.

Scarves still held a faint trace of Rebecca's perfume. There were recipes, an unfinished crossword book, a knitted hat Clara had refused to wear at twelve.

She pressed the hat between her hands.

"I thought it made me look like a mushroom."

"Did it?"

"A little."

His mouth softened.

She found the music box beneath a stack of envelopes. The silver bird's wing had been rubbed almost smooth.

Underneath, Eleanor had written: To R. There is always a way home. E.

Inside were the lavender cards, a pair of earrings, and a velvet tray that no longer fitted properly over its wooden supports.

Clara lifted the tray to straighten it.

An envelope lay beneath it.

Her name was written across the front in Rebecca's handwriting.

She stared until Lorenzo quietly asked, "Would you like me to wait outside?"

"No. Stay."

The letter was short. Rebecca had written it during her illness, when Clara was nineteen. She apologized for things she hadn't found the courage to explain. She named Eleanor as the friend who had helped them leave Long Island and asked Clara to look at the enclosed photograph before deciding whether to seek out the Ducas.

Clara shook the envelope gently.

A second print slid into her palm.

Eleanor stood on a lawn beside Rebecca. A young man held a baby against his chest, his head bent toward her. Off to one side, an adolescent boy carried a paper plate piled with food.

Lorenzo made a sound beside her.

"Who is he?" Clara asked.

He looked at the man holding the infant.

"My brother. Julian."

Clara turned over the photograph.

Rebecca had written the names herself.

Julian holding his daughter, Clara. Her first summer.

For a moment the words wouldn't arrange themselves into meaning.

Then she looked up at Lorenzo.

"Your brother was my father?"