The green dress I’d been saving for was still in Claire’s bedroom when my phone slipped beneath her couch. I reached into the gap and pulled out something bearing my own eight-year-old face. Then I noticed a note in Claire’s handwriting dated the exact day we matched on Tinder, and realized she’d known me before.
My phone vanished between Claire’s couch cushion and the armrest while she was in the bedroom changing into the green dress I’d bought her.
I muttered something I wouldn’t repeat in front of my mother and pushed my hand into the gap.
She was in the bedroom changing into the green dress.
My fingers came across two quarters, a pen cap, something that felt suspiciously like an ancient potato chip, and finally my phone.
But when I pulled my hand free, a photograph came out with it.
It landed facedown on the rug.
I picked it up without thinking.
Then I froze.
A photograph came with it.
The picture was old enough for the colors to have faded along the edges. A group of children sat on the floor of what appeared to be a library, each holding a book.
The picture was old.
Near the end of the row sat a skinny boy with uneven brown hair and a gap where one front tooth should have been.
Me.
Eight years old, maybe nine.
I knew it was me because I remembered that terrible striped shirt. My mother had insisted it made me look “handsome.”
I remembered that awful striped shirt.
I’d never given Claire a childhood photograph.
Standing beside me was a girl around my age wearing purple glasses.
I turned the photograph over.
In faded blue ink, someone had written:
“Nora + Ethan, Summer Reading Club.”
I had never given Claire a childhood photograph.
Beneath that, in much newer black ink, were five words.
“Found Ethan today. Tell him.”
Underneath was a date.
I checked it twice.
It was the date Claire and I had matched on Tinder.
Underneath was a date.
Cold crept across my arms even though Claire’s apartment was warm.
“Ethan?”
Her voice came from the bedroom.
I kept staring at the handwriting.
A second later, Claire walked into the living room.
I stared at the handwriting.
The dress fit her perfectly.
Emerald green, exactly as I’d imagined when I returned to the boutique without her. Her dark hair was loosely pinned behind one ear, and she was still fastening her other earring.
For a moment, she smiled.
The dress fit her perfectly.
Then she noticed the photograph.
Her fingers remained on the earring.
She didn’t finish putting it in.
“Where did you get that?”
I almost laughed.
“Your couch.”
Claire said nothing.
She saw the photograph.
I raised the photograph.
“Who is Nora?”
Her hand slowly dropped.
“Ethan…”
“No.” I pointed at the date. “Why did you write this the day we met?”
She glanced toward the couch as though another answer might be sitting there.
“Who is Nora?”
At last she said, “Because I knew who you were.”
I stared at her.
“Before Tinder?”
“Yes.”
The green dress suddenly seemed ridiculously bright in the room.
“You knew me before we matched?”
“Yes.”
“How?”
“Because I knew who you were.”
Claire looked at the photograph instead of responding.
I read the note aloud.
“‘Found Ethan today. Tell him.’ Tell me what?”
She reached for the back of a dining chair but didn’t sit.
“Nora was my sister.”
I read the note aloud.
I looked at the little girl in the photograph again.
Something stirred at the edge of my memory.
Purple glasses.
A laugh.
A book held open between two sets of knees.
Nothing remained long enough for me to catch it.
“Your sister?”
Something moved at the edge of my memory.
“My half-sister. She was much younger than me.”
“Why am I in a picture with her?”
Claire looked straight at me now.
“Because you were friends.”
The answer should have made things clearer.
Instead, it only made everything worse.
“Why am I in a picture with her?”
I’d spent six months believing I knew exactly how Claire and I had started.
I was 25 and almost finished with dating apps.
Claire was 45. She’d been different from her very first message. She was direct, funny, and certain about what she wanted. The 20-year age difference made me hesitate, but only briefly. Our first coffee lasted nearly four hours.
She remembered I hated cinnamon in my coffee.
I remembered that she collected awful refrigerator magnets whenever she traveled.
The 20-year age difference made me hesitate.
By our third date, she knew my boss’s name, my favorite pizza place, and the story behind the scar on my wrist.
With Claire, I had never needed to wonder what she meant.
Apparently, I’d only been wondering where she’d come from.
I had never had to guess what she meant.
“So you matched with me because of Nora.”
Claire didn’t avoid the truth.
“At first, yes.”
I placed the photograph on the coffee table.
“Wow.”
“Ethan, I wasn’t trying to trick you into a relationship.”
“You literally recognized me from childhood and didn’t tell me.”
“I know.”
“I wasn’t trying to trick you into a relationship.”
“You went to coffee already knowing who I was.”
“Yes.”
“And I knew nothing.”
She shut her eyes for a moment.
“Yes. I meant to tell you that day.”
I picked up the photograph and tapped the newer handwriting.
“You wrote this before you saw me again.”
“I meant to tell you that day.”
I looked at the date on the photograph once more.
“Were you ever going to tell me? Where was this taken?”
“The old Pine Street library.”
I frowned.
“Didn’t they gut that place years ago?”
“The original children’s room is still there,” she said. “They rebuilt around it.”
“Didn’t they gut that place years ago?”
Then fragments of it surfaced.
Low shelves.
Beanbags.
A paper sun hanging crookedly from a ceiling tile.
I could almost smell the dusty carpet.
Then something else.
Yellow.
I could see pieces of it.
I stared at the photograph.
“Her glasses were yellow.”
Claire blinked.
“What?”
“Nora’s glasses. They were yellow.”
Claire looked at the picture again.
“They were purple.”
“No,” I said. “They were yellow.”
“They were purple.”
Claire stared at me for a moment.
Then she laughed.
“She painted them.”
“What?”
“With yellow nail polish. My mother almost lost her mind.”
The image came back so suddenly that I had to sit down.
A girl sitting cross-legged with thick yellow glasses, reading a paperback too close to her face.
The image arrived so suddenly.
I couldn’t remember the title.
But I remembered being annoyed with her.
Publicidad
“You want to go there?” Claire asked.
I looked up.
She immediately caught herself.
“Sorry. Wrong question.”
A beat passed.
“You want to go there?”
Then she tried again.
“If you want to know where the picture came from, I’ll tell you here. Or I can show you. Or I can leave.”
It was the first thing she’d said all evening that didn’t feel chosen for me.
“I can show you. Or I can leave.”
I grabbed my jacket.
“Take me to the library.”
Claire changed out of the green dress without saying another word.
Twenty minutes later, we stood beneath the fluorescent lights of the Pine Street branch.
The adult section looked completely unfamiliar.
The children’s room didn’t.
The adult section looked completely unfamiliar.
It was smaller than I remembered.
Much smaller.
I slowly walked past the shelves until I reached the back corner.
“There used to be a blue rug.”
Claire pointed. “Right there.”
Now it was gray.
I sat at one of the little tables.
My knees barely fit underneath.
Now it was gray.
Claire remained near the doorway.
I looked around.
Then I noticed a display of adventure books.
And another piece returned.
Publicidad
Nora slamming a book shut.
Me accusing her of skipping three pages.
Her telling me I was just slow. I laughed before I could stop myself.
Claire didn’t ask why.
“She cheated,” I said.
“Oh, constantly.”
“She skipped ahead.”
“Also constantly.”
“I hated that.”
“She knew.”
I looked over at her.
Claire smiled, but it wasn’t really for me. It was for someone who wasn’t there.
“I hated that.”
I hated how deeply that hurt.
“Was she sick?” I asked.
Claire glanced toward the doorway before answering.
“Yes.”
There it was.
The thing she’d been carrying toward me for six months.
“How sick?”
“Was she sick?”
“She had a chronic condition from childhood. That summer was one of the better stretches.”
“So she came here?”
“Every week she could.”
Claire came closer but stopped on the opposite side of the table.
“She hated people asking about her health before they asked her name.”
“That summer was one of the better stretches.”
I looked at the empty chair beside me.
“I didn’t know.”
“That was why she liked you.”
I gave her a sharp look.
“Don’t turn me into some saintly eight-year-old.”
Claire almost smiled.
“You weren’t. You made her cry once because you said she cheated at Uno.”
“That was why she liked you.”
“Did she?”
“Absolutely.”
Despite myself, I laughed.
It lasted maybe two seconds.
Then the harder question came back.
“What happened to her?”
Claire pulled out the chair across from me.
“Can I sit?”
I nodded.
She sat.
“What happened to her?”
“Near the end of that summer, our mom took Nora out of town for specialized treatment. Everybody thought she’d be gone a few weeks.”
My fingers found a scratch carved into the table.
“And?”
“She got worse.”
“Everybody thought she’d be gone a few weeks.”
I stopped running my thumb over the scratch.
Claire continued quietly.
“She died that winter.”
I stared toward the shelves.
Somewhere behind us, a child laughed.
For a while, neither of us spoke.
Then I asked, “Nobody told me?”
“No.”
“Nobody told me?”
“But you knew I existed.”
“Yes.”
“You knew who I was when you saw me on Tinder.”
“Yes.”
“So why then?”
Claire looked down at her hands.
“Because I thought I’d finally been given a chance to tell you.”
I waited.
“So why then?”
“I didn’t know your last name for years,” she continued. “I knew Ethan. I knew your mom used to pick you up in a red car. I knew you moved not long after Nora got sick. By the time I thought seriously about finding you, I had almost nothing useful.”
“I didn’t know your last name for years.”
“But eventually you did.”
“Seventeen years later, your face showed up on my phone.”
I rubbed both hands over my jeans.
“And you swiped right.”
“Yes.”
“To tell me Nora died. That was the whole plan?”
“And you swiped right.”
“One coffee. Tell you who I was. Tell you what happened. Thank you for being her friend.”
I looked at her.
“And then?”
Claire let out a tired little laugh.
“Then you ordered another coffee. You stayed until they started stacking chairs around us.”
“Tell you who I was.”
“That doesn’t answer why you lied, Claire.”
“No.”
Good.
At least she didn’t pretend it did.
I leaned back.
“If Nora had never existed, would you have swiped right on me?”
“That doesn’t answer why you lied, Claire.”
Claire looked at me for several seconds.
“I don’t know.”
It hurt more than a prettier answer would have.
She continued before I could say anything.
“I probably wouldn’t have stopped on your profile long enough to find out.”
I looked away.
It hurt more than a prettier answer would have.
“But Nora got me to that coffee shop,” she admitted. “She didn’t make me order another coffee. Or stay until they stacked the chairs around us.”
I stood.
“What happened after that doesn’t erase what happened before it.” “I know.”
“There you go again.”
“Sorry.”
“Nora got me to that coffee shop.”
I picked up the photograph.
“You kept deciding what I was allowed to know.”
Claire didn’t try to defend herself.
Finally, she said, “Yes.”
“Why?”
“At first, because I didn’t want you to think I was using Nora to get close to you.”
“You were using Nora to get close to me.”
Claire didn’t defend herself.
“To meet you. Yes.”
“And later?”
Claire stared at the gray carpet.
“Later I was scared you’d leave.”
That was the first answer all night that didn’t come wrapped in something noble.
I folded the photograph once, then immediately unfolded it.
“I need some time by myself.”
“I was scared you’d leave.”
Claire stood.
“Do you want me to leave?”
I thought about it.
Then shook my head.
“Stay here.”
She nodded.
I walked outside alone.
And for once, Claire didn’t follow me.
“Stay here.”
But halfway across the library courtyard, another memory returned.
Nora snapping a book shut.
Me furious.
My own childish voice saying:
“Fine. Finish it yourself.”
I stopped walking.
Because suddenly I needed to know whether that had been the last thing I ever said to her.
Another memory came back.
I texted Claire.
“Can you come outside?”
She appeared a minute later but stopped several feet away.
“I remembered something.”
Claire waited.
“I told Nora to finish the book herself.” I rubbed the edge of the photograph with my thumb. “Was that the last time I saw her?”
“I remembered something.”
Claire slowly shook her head.
“I don’t know exactly what your last conversation was.”
That answer helped more than false certainty would have.
“But she talked about you afterward,” Claire added.
“What did she say?”
“Mostly that you were annoying.”
I laughed.
“What did she say?”
Then Claire smiled.
“She also said you always waited when she fell behind reading.”
I looked down at the picture.
For years, Nora had existed somewhere in my mind as a missing piece I’d stopped noticing.
Now she was becoming a person again.
Nora had existed somewhere in my mind.
Yellow glasses.
Cheating at games.
Skipping pages.
Getting mad at me.
I looked at Claire.
“I believe you love me. But I don’t know what I trust yet.”
She didn’t move.
“I understand.”
“No, you don’t. Neither do I.”
“I understand.”
Claire nodded.
“What do you want me to do?”
The question caught me off guard.
“Tonight? Tell me about Nora.”
“And after?”
“I want to go home.”
“Okay.”
We spent another hour talking.
Nothing dramatic.
“I want to go home.”
Nora hated raisins. She wanted a motorcycle when she turned 16. She believed rules in board games were “suggestions.”
When we returned to Claire’s apartment, the green dress was folded over a chair.
“Do you want me to return it?” she asked.
“No.”
“Do you want me to return it?”
She looked at me.
“I bought it because you wanted it,” I said. “That part didn’t change.”
Then I went home.
Four days later, I returned to the library alone and checked out the book Nora and I had once argued over.
The ending was terrible.
“I bought it because you wanted it.”
I texted Claire.
“Nora was right. The ending is awful.”
Her reply came almost immediately.
“She was unbearable when she was right.”
I smiled.
“I’m still at the library if you want to come argue about it.”
“She was unbearable when she was right.”
Claire arrived twenty minutes later.
We sat at the little children’s table.
As I read, her hand automatically moved toward the page.
I put one finger down.
“Hey. I’m not done.”
We sat at the little children’s table.
Her hand stopped.
“Sorry.”
She pulled it back.
And waited.
I finished the paragraph.
Then I turned the page myself.
I finished the paragraph.
