Then she said quietly, “I'm sorry.”
I nodded.
“Thank you.”
She did not rush to fill the silence.
She didn't tell me everything happened for a reason.
Didn't say Hannah was in a better place.
Didn't explain that time healed all wounds.
She simply sat beside me.
And somehow that was enough.
After a while, I asked about her family.
She told me her younger sister lived in Indianapolis and called every Sunday.
Her mother had died when she was a teenager.
Her father had passed away four years earlier from a sudden heart attack.
She glanced toward the blue Camaro.
“That was his.”
I looked at the car.
“Really?”
She nodded.
“He loved it.”
“Looks like he took good care of it.”
Mara smiled sadly.
“He did.”
She rubbed the lid of her coffee cup.
“For years, I kept thinking about selling it. Then every time I drove it, I felt like he was still around.”
I nodded.
“Cars can do that.”
She looked toward me.
“You understand?”
“More than you know.”
I gestured toward the garage.
“My grandfather built this place. Half the tools still belong to him. Sometimes I pick up a wrench and remember exactly how he used to hold it.”
Mara smiled.
Then looked down.
For a moment, she seemed close to tears.
I wondered why.
But I didn't ask.
We sat quietly for another minute.
Then she turned toward me.
“Can I ask you something strange?”
I smiled.
“Depends how strange.”
She laughed nervously.
“Do you have a grandmother named Nora?”
My fingers tightened around the coffee cup.
For a moment, I didn't understand why the question startled me so much.
Then she continued.
“She used to live in a white house on Elmwood Street. Big front porch. Roses along the fence.”
The traffic noise seemed to disappear.
I looked directly at her.
“How do you know that?”
Mara stopped smiling.
Her eyes moved across my face.
Slowly.
Carefully.
As though she were searching for something she had lost.
“I thought so,” she whispered.
I leaned forward.
“What?”
She swallowed.
Then said quietly, “Caleb Thomas Warren.”
My heart began pounding.
Nobody in Chicago called me that.