Melissa reached the bakery doorway.
“There used to be a red stool.”
I stared.
I had thrown it away twelve years earlier.
“You sat there after school.”
“I did homework.”
“You pretended to.”
She laughed.
Ava laughed because Melissa laughed.
And somehow that ordinary sound filled every corner of the market.
We spent two hours there.
Melissa remembered pieces.
The freezer door that never closed properly.
The loose tile near register three.
Maria sneaking her chocolate milk when I said she had already had enough sugar.
Other things were gone.
She did not remember our annual fishing trip.
She didn’t remember the family vacation to Colorado.
When I mentioned an old boyfriend from high school, she stared blankly.
Each missing memory hurt.
But I began understanding something Dr. Foster had tried to tell me.
I had been waiting for my old daughter to return.
Melissa was asking me to know the woman who had survived.
