She did not get out of the car immediately. She sat behind the wheel, checking her lipstick in the rearview mirror before she finally pushed the door open. She held her reading glasses in her right hand, tapping them twice against her chin as she looked toward my kitchen window.
“Martha, you look entirely worn out,” Clara said, her voice carrying that precise, formal grammar she had used ever since we were girls. “You should not be spending your mornings dealing with things that are best left in the past.”
“Daniel is here, Clara,” I said, leaning against the warm metal of her car hood. “He is sitting at my kitchen table right now.”
Clara’s eyes narrowed behind her thin frames, her expression hardening. “A man who disappears for fifty-five years does not simply walk back into a small town without an angle. You must be careful.”
“He was kept in a prison camp, Clara,” I said. “He was not hiding.”
“That is his version of the story,” she said, her tone sharp and clean as a fresh sheet of paper. “But you must remember how easily you were led when we were young. We have our family standing to protect in this town, and Richard says people are already talking about the old truck parked in your yard.”
“Richard has no say in who visits me,” I said.
“Richard is the bank manager, Martha, and he understands the character of people in this county,” Clara said, tapping her glasses against her chin again. “I strongly advise you to close your door to this man before you find yourself with nothing left.”
“He has a right to be here,” I said. “His family owned half the valley.”
Clara adjusted her linen collar, her fingers perfectly steady. “A home is built on stability, Martha, not on old promises that were broken before the decade turned. I will see you at two for our afternoon sewing.”
She did not wait for me to answer before she backed down the gravel drive, leaving a trail of orange dust hanging in the hot air.
The sunroom at Clara’s house was cool and dark, smelling faintly of the lavender sachets she kept in her linen closets to keep the dampness away. Clara had gone into the kitchen to squeeze lemons for iced tea, leaving me alone with the quiet hum of the window air conditioner.
In the corner of the room sat her writing desk, a heavy walnut piece that had belonged to our grandmother. I knew Clara kept all her correspondence there, filed away in neat, cardboard boxes with the years written in her precise hand.
I stepped quietly across the braided rug, keeping my eyes on the kitchen door where the sound of metal spoons clinking against glass echoed down the hall.
I lifted the heavy walnut lid of the desk. The dry brass hinges gave a tiny, sharp squeak that made my breath catch in my throat, but I did not stop. Inside, the correspondence was organized in tight bundles tied with faded green string.
