I got back to the motel maybe ten minutes later and somebody was already sitting in the chair outside my room.
Daniel.
Same flannel jacket. Same scar near his eyebrow from when he slipped fixing our gutters one winter.
He stood up too fast when he saw me.
I remember dropping my purse right there on the sidewalk.
He kept saying, “You need to leave town tomorrow morning.”
Not hello.
Not I’m sorry.
Just that.
I started screaming at him in the parking lot asking who was buried in that coffin four years ago because I stood there and watched them lower it into the ground.
Daniel kept looking toward the road like he was expecting somebody.
Then he finally admitted his brother paid him to disappear after the crash because of gambling debt and people threatening the family.
I honestly thought he was insane.
Then he said something worse.
He said the little boy at the diner wasn’t his son.
He said the boy was mine.
I couldn’t even process that sentence.
I lost that baby at eight weeks.
I bled for days.
The hospital told me there was no heartbeat.
Daniel looked sick standing there.
Then he said his mother handled everything while I was sedated after the accident because “they thought the stress would kill me too.”
I told him that was impossible.
That’s when somebody pounded hard on my motel door from inside the room behind us and a little boy’s voice yelled,
“Dad? Is that the lady from the diner?”