“The eggs are overdone.”
“I’m aware.”
“My mother would have been horrified.”
It came out before she could decide whether to say it.
The word mother dropped naturally into the conversation, and with it came the first small, unexpected flicker of something lighter. Not quite a smile, but close.
He looked at her.
“She had very high standards,” he said quietly, with the particular care of a man speaking about someone he had known only briefly but thought about for a long time.
Rebecca looked at her plate. “Yes,” she said. “She did.”
Then there was silence, but a different kind. Not heavy. Not waiting for something. Just the ordinary quiet of 2 people eating breakfast together for the first time.
3 days later, Grace came to visit.
She arrived on a Saturday morning with a container of food, something she had cooked at home, wrapped carefully the way she always brought things, and rang the gate bell with her usual punctuality.
Mr. Caleb opened the gate.
Grace looked at him, then past him at the house, then back at him. “Is everything all right?” she asked. “Rebecca told me she wasn’t working here anymore, and I wanted to come…”
“Grace,” he said, “there is something I need to tell you.”
She came in carrying her container, her expression alert with the particular attention of someone who can tell that a conversation is going to be more complicated than expected.
They went to the sitting room.
Rebecca was already there, sitting in 1 of the leather chairs with a cup of tea, wearing the same blue dress.
Grace looked at her. “You’re here?” she said, surprised.
“I’m here,” Rebecca said.
Grace looked between them, from Rebecca to Mr. Caleb and back again. Her eyes narrowed slightly, the way a person’s eyes narrow when they are trying to read a room and the room is not cooperating.
She sat down.
Mr. Caleb sat across from them both. He was quiet for a moment. Then he looked at Grace directly.
“When you recommended Rebecca to me,” he said, “you did something you could not have known the full weight of.”
He paused.
“Rebecca is my daughter, Grace. I did not know it when she arrived. She did not know it when she arrived. But it is the truth, and it has been confirmed, and I want you to hear it from me.”
Grace stared at him.
She looked at Rebecca.
Rebecca looked back at her, steady and calm.
“Your…” Grace started, then stopped. Her eyes went wide. She pressed 1 hand over her mouth and sat there for a long moment with her eyes moving back and forth between the 2 of them. “Your daughter?”
“Yes,” Mr. Caleb said.
“Rebecca,” Grace breathed. She turned to her. “Did you know? Did you, when I brought you here? Did you?”
