“Are you hungry?” I asked. It was a stupid question, but it was the only one I could find.
She shrugged. “I haven’t eaten since Ohio.”
I stood up and checked my fridge. There was some leftover chicken, a block of cheddar, and three eggs.
It wasn’t enough for a proper dinner, certainly not for a daughter you haven’t seen in over a decade.
“There’s a diner down the street,” I said. “They have decent pie. It’s warm inside.”
Chloe stood up, shaking her coat out. “Okay. Let’s go there.”
We walked out into the cold Indiana rain. The streetlights were just turning on, casting long, yellow reflections on the wet asphalt. We walked side by side, but we didn’t touch. We didn’t talk about Dan, or the money orders, or the fourteen years of dinners I had missed.
But as we reached the corner, she didn’t walk faster to stay ahead of me. She kept her pace matched to mine.
When we got to the diner, the bell above the door jingled. It was loud and warm inside, smelling of grease and burnt coffee. The waitress pointed us to a booth in the back near the kitchen.
Chloe slid into the vinyl seat. She took off her wet band, letting her dark hair fall around her shoulders. She looked so much like me it made my ribs ache.
“Jonah has a football game on Friday,” she said, staring at the laminated menu. “He plays defense. He’s not very good, but he likes the helmet.”
I swallowed the lump in my throat. “Does he?”
“Yeah,” she said. She looked up from the menu, her eyes steady. “It’s a six-hour drive. But the traffic isn’t bad if you leave after three.”
I looked at the salt shaker on the table, then back at her.
The win didn’t fix the fourteen years. The letter didn’t make me a mother again, and it didn’t wash away the smell of the cheap vodka from my twenty-third year. But as the waitress came over with two glasses of water, I realized the door wasn’t locked anymore.
“I can leave by two,” I said.
Chloe nodded once, a small, tight movement of her chin. “Two is better. The bridge near the state line always gets backed up after four.”
