ANSWER WHAT?
Sadie called on a Tuesday at 6:42 p.m.
Dana had been expecting an email.
The phone rang while she was slicing tomatoes.
Unknown number.
She nearly ignored it.
Then something in her body seemed to understand before her mind did.
She put down the knife.
“Hello?”
A woman breathed on the other end.
Dana gripped the counter.
“Hello?”
“Is this Dana Weller?”
Dana closed her eyes.
“Yes.”
Another breath.
“This is Sadie.”
The kitchen became impossibly ordinary.
Tomato juice on the cutting board.
Dishwasher humming.
Dog scratching at the back door.
Dana had imagined this voice at every age.
Five.
Ten.
Sixteen.
Twenty.
The real voice was lower than expected.
Adult.
“I don't know what I'm supposed to say,” Sadie said.
Dana leaned both hands against the counter.
“You don't have to say anything.”
“That seems unfair after twenty-five years.”
There was humor in the sentence, but it trembled.
Dana's throat tightened.
“You can hang up if you want.”
“I spent eleven months waiting for you to register.”
Dana pressed her lips together.
“I know.”
“Did you just find out?”
“Last week.”
Sadie made a small sound.
Not quite disbelief.
“Why didn't you answer before?”
Dana frowned.
“Answer what?”
Silence.
This silence was different from Lorraine's.
Sadie said, “My letters.”
Dana's fingers went numb.
“What letters?”
“The ones I sent you.”
Dana pulled out a chair and sat.
“I never got a letter from you.”
“Okay.”
Sadie's voice changed.
“Okay, that's not funny.”
“I'm not joking.”
“I sent one when I was eighteen.”
Dana held the phone tighter.
“Where?”
“To your mother's house.”
Dana stopped breathing for a second.
Sadie continued.
“Mom wouldn't give me your address. She said she didn't have it. Dad finally told me your mother's name and the town.”
Dana looked toward the front door as though Lorraine might be standing outside.
“I didn't live there anymore.”
“I know. I asked her to give it to you.”
Dana closed her eyes.
“Sadie—”
“I sent another one when I turned twenty-one.”
“I didn't get it.”
“She said you did.”
The words were quiet.
Dana felt something old begin to rearrange itself.
“Who said?”
“My grandmother.”
Dana knew exactly which grandmother Sadie meant.
Lorraine had insisted on that word during the adoption.
She's still allowed to be Grandma Lorraine if everybody is comfortable.
For the first two years, the Colters had been comfortable.
“Sadie, my mother told me your parents wanted no contact.”
“My mother told me you wanted no contact.”
Dana stared at the tomato halves on the cutting board.
Neither spoke.
Then Sadie said, “This is bad.”
“Yes.”
“My mom said after I was two you wrote asking us not to contact you anymore.”
“I didn't.”
“She said you wanted to move on.”
“I didn't.”
“She said you got married.”
“I didn't get married.”
Sadie's breathing caught.
Dana heard a chair scrape somewhere on the other end.
“My father believed her,” Sadie said.
“Joan?”
“Yes.”
Dana rubbed one hand over her forehead.
For years she had imagined Joan Colter as frozen in the last moment Dana had seen her: standing outside the diner with two-year-old Sadie on her hip, trying not to cry while promising another visit soon.
“Your father died,” Dana said.
“Six years ago.”
“I saw.”
“You looked me up?”
“Yes.”
“How long?”
Dana understood the accusation beneath the question.
“Six days.”
Sadie exhaled slowly.
“So you really didn't know where I was.”
“No.”
“Mom said you always could have found us.”
Dana thought about the directory.
Maybe she could have.
She had believed Lorraine.
She had also been afraid.
Both could be true.
“I should have looked sooner,” Dana said.
Sadie did not rush to forgive her.
Dana was grateful for that.
“I was told looking would be selfish,” she continued. “Eventually I used that as an excuse not to find out whether I was wanted.”
“You could have tried.”
“Yes.”
The answer seemed to disarm Sadie more than a defense would have.
Dana heard her sniff once.
“What was my name?”
Dana's hand tightened around the phone.
“When?”
“Before Sadie.”
“Lucy.”
There was a pause.
“Lucy what?”
“Lucy Mae Weller.”
Sadie laughed softly.
“Mae?”
“My grandmother's name.”
“I hate Mae.”
Dana laughed before she meant to.
“Good thing they changed it.”
The laugh became something else in both of them.
Not crying exactly.
Something unsteady.
Sadie said, “Do you want to see me?”
Dana closed her eyes.
Every answer she had imagined was too large.
I have wanted nothing else for twenty-five years.
I never stopped loving you.
I have been waiting.
All true.
All unfair to put on a stranger who happened to share her blood.
“Yes,” Dana said. “But only if you want to see me.”
“I asked first.”
“I know.”
“That is incredibly annoying.”
“I've been told.”
Another small laugh.
“There's a diner by the old Hollis truck stop,” Sadie said. “You know it?”
Dana looked through the kitchen window toward the west.
Mile Marker 41 was seven miles beyond Hollis.
“Yes.”
“Saturday?”
Dana's heartbeat accelerated.
“What time?”
“Two?”
“Yes.”
“Okay.”
“Okay.”
Sadie hesitated.
“Dana?”
“Yes?”
“Do you know where they picked me up?”
Dana looked at the flowers she had brought home from the grocery store that morning without understanding why.
“Yes.”
“Where?”
She almost lied.
Not because she wanted to deceive Sadie.
Because some part of her wanted to keep that place private.
“Mile Marker 41.”
Sadie repeated the number.
“My dad mentioned a highway shoulder once.”
Dana's hand went still.
“What did he say?”
“That Mom didn't want anyone seeing them at your house. She said your mother chose the location.”
Dana's pulse quickened.
“That isn't what I was told.”
“What were you told?”
“That Joan was afraid her family would change their minds if they knew where I lived.”
Sadie let out a breath.
“Another version.”
“Yes.”
“Were the flowers yours?”
Dana frowned.
“What flowers?”
“There are pictures online.”
Dana felt heat rise into her face.
“What pictures?”
“Some local road-safety group posted about people leaving roadside memorials where there hadn't been a recorded fatality. They included Mile Marker 41.”
Dana covered her eyes.
“Wonderful.”
“I saw yellow flowers in the photo.”
Dana remembered the previous year.
Daffodils.
“So those are yours?”
“Yes.”
Sadie went quiet.
“Who died there?”
The question was almost identical to Wade's.
Dana looked down at her hands.
“Nobody.”
“What?”
“Nobody died there.”
She heard herself say the sentence again.
This time it hurt differently.
“It was just the last place I saw you.”
Sadie did not speak for several seconds.
Then, very softly, she said, “Saturday. Two o'clock.”
The call ended.
Dana remained at the kitchen table until darkness filled the windows.
Later, she took the tomatoes from the cutting board and threw them away.
She wasn't hungry.
But for the first time in years, she didn't drive to Mile Marker 41.