Margaret’s note was dated Friday, the day I’d sat in a waiting room with an empty chair beside me.
Under the porch light, I read it again.
Warren, I went to the appointment. I saw her come out with the picture.
I could remember people from that morning. A man asleep with his chin tucked into his jacket. A woman filling out a form on her husband’s back because there was nowhere to set the clipboard. I couldn’t remember Margaret. I must have walked right past her.
“When did she tell you I’d lost the baby?” I asked.
“That evening.”
I looked up. “She told you the same day she saw me carrying an ultrasound out of the clinic?”
“Yes.”
“And what did you do after she told you?”
Warren looked down at the paper, as if there might be another answer on it.
“I went back inside. Priya was making dinner.”
For seven years, I’d imagined different versions of the moment Warren decided to stay away. In some he was furious with me. In others he was scared. I’d never imagined him putting his phone down and going back to dinner.
“Did you read this note back then?” I asked.
“No. She kept the whole thing.”
“But she told you on the phone. What did you say when she told you?”
His face changed.
“I asked her if she was sure you wouldn’t call again.”
Upstairs, the floor creaked. June sometimes got out of bed to check whether I’d left the hallway light on. Neither of us moved until we heard her door close.
“The first thing she asked me about you was whether she’d met you and forgotten,” I said. “She was worried there’d been a whole visit she couldn’t remember.”
Warren took his glasses off. He ran the edge of his shirt over one lens, then over the other. The rain had stopped twenty minutes ago.
“Grace, what can I do?”
“Go home tonight.”
He put his glasses back on. “Can I call tomorrow?”
“I’ll ask her what she wants. Give me your number this time.”
He wrote it on the back of the brown envelope. When he handed it over, I saw him glance past me at the stairs. A pair of June’s socks lay on the bottom step. He looked at them for a second, then went down the porch steps without another word.
I put the envelope in the kitchen drawer beside the letter Margaret had sent back. There was room for both.
The question June wanted answered
In the morning, June put her bear at the kitchen table and poured him a bowl of dry cereal. Then she sat down across from me.
“Was that him at our door?”
“Yes.”
“Did he come to see me?”
“He came to talk to me about what happened a long time ago.”
She picked through her cereal until she found two pieces stuck together.
“I thought of what I want to ask him,” she said.
“Okay.”
“I want to ask him if he wanted me to be alive.”
I set down my cup. There was a little milk on her chin. I reached for a napkin, and she wiped it away with her sleeve before I could get there.
“You can ask him that,” I said. “Would you like me to be there?”
“Can you sit on the same side as me?”
“Yes.”
“And can it be somewhere I can go play if I’m done?”
We settled on the park by the library. I texted Warren the address, then added that June might change her mind when she got there. He replied with a single word.
Okay.
An hour later, while June was drawing at the kitchen table, someone rang the doorbell. She looked up immediately.
“He’s early,” she said.
I went to the window. Priya was on the porch, holding a blue envelope with a bent corner.
“It’s the lady from the bakery,” I told June.
“Does she want to ask me something too?”
“I’ll find out.”
Priya looked as though she’d come straight from work. Her hair was still pinned up, and there was a mark on the side of her nose from wearing glasses. She took a step back when I opened the door.
“Is June here?” she asked.
“Yes.”
“Then I’d rather you see this first.”
She handed me the envelope. On the front, in Margaret’s careful cursive, was my daughter’s full name.
June Elizabeth Bennett.
Warren had learned her first name at the bakery. Even he didn’t know the rest.
“Where did you get this?”
“In Margaret’s apartment. Last night Warren told me what she’d said to him. I went over this morning to ask her why.”
“And she gave you a birthday card?”
“I saw your daughter’s name when she opened a drawer to put something away. I asked her how long she’d known it.” Priya looked at the envelope in my hand. “She picked out that one and told me to take it.”
“That one?”
“There were six, Grace.”
I glanced behind me. June was still drawing, her pencil making the fast, heavy strokes she used when she wanted to color the whole sky.
I slid my finger under the flap. Inside was a card with a yellow dog wearing a paper crown. There was no money, no gift card, nothing a child would have been excited to shake loose. Across the inside, Margaret had written one sentence.
Your father made these same pancakes for me when he turned six. I hope he makes them for you someday.
I took a breath and turned the card over. Penciled on the back was the name of June’s elementary school.
“Did Warren see this?” I asked.
“No. He thought yesterday was the first time his mother had heard June’s name.”
“Did she tell you how she knew it?”
Priya nodded. “She said you told her.”
The woman at the school gate
I hadn’t spoken to Margaret since the café. I would have remembered telling her my daughter’s name. I would have remembered telling her anything.
Then I thought of the first week of school. June had been afraid she’d miss me after I left, so I’d promised to stand outside the gate until she got to the classroom door. On the third day, she’d turned and waved so hard that a passing teacher had waved back.
There had been a woman behind me that morning. She’d bent down to pick up the lunch bag June had dropped. I’d thanked her over my shoulder while I was helping June with her coat.
I had no idea whether that woman was Margaret. Now I was going to spend the rest of the day trying to remember her face.
“What exactly did she say?” I asked Priya.
“She said, ‘Grace told me everything I needed to know about June. She just doesn’t remember.’”
That sounded like Margaret. When she wanted you to doubt your own memory, she spoke slowly, as if she were helping you find something you’d mislaid.
“Would you like to come in?” I asked.
Priya looked surprised. So was I. I’d spent years imagining what I’d say if she ever stood on my porch. In none of those conversations did I offer her coffee.
She shook her head. “I’ve been up since yesterday. I should go home.”
She made it to the first step before turning back.
“When he told me you’d lost the baby, I bought you a card,” she said. “I wrote it twice because I couldn’t figure out whether hearing from me would make things worse. Warren said it would. I let him decide.”
I held Margaret’s card by its edges. “What did yours say?”
“That I was sorry you were going through something so awful, and that I hoped you had someone with you.”
“I did,” I said. “My sister came over most nights while I was pregnant. For the first month after June was born, she slept on my couch.”
Priya nodded. “I’m glad she was there.”
After she left, I put Margaret’s card beside the other papers in the drawer. June’s drawing was still on the kitchen table. She’d drawn two people on a bench, with room for a third person at the far end. Behind them was a swing set.
“I put the swings close,” she said. “So I don’t have to walk very far if I want a turn.”
The first thing Warren told her
Warren was already at the park when we arrived. He stood when he saw us, then looked at the bench as though he wasn’t sure whether he’d chosen the right one. June walked up to it and pointed to the end farthest from the swings.
“You can sit there,” she told him.
He sat down.
I took the middle. June climbed up beside me and tucked one sneaker under her leg. For a little while, she seemed content to watch a squirrel try to carry an entire sandwich crust up a tree.
Finally, she said, “Did you want me to be alive?”
Warren had been holding his hands loosely in his lap. He put both palms flat on his knees.
“Yes,” he said.
June looked past me at him. “Even when you didn’t know what I looked like?”
“Even then. And I should have gone with your mom to see you when she asked me. I wanted an easier day, so I stayed home. Your mom had to have the hard day by herself.”
June took a moment to think about that.
“I was there,” she said.
Warren looked at me. His mouth started to move, but he waited until he could speak.
“Yes,” he told her. “You were.”
“Did you really pick my name?”
“I suggested it. Your mom picked it.”
“Why did you suggest it?”
He glanced at me. I’d always assumed he liked the month because I did.
“My dad used to take me to the lake in June,” he said. “The water was always too cold, and I always went in anyway. I’d come out with my teeth knocking together, and he’d open a towel for me. I think I was remembering how it felt when he held out that towel.”
June leaned against me. “I like it. Except when people ask if I was born in June. I was born in May, and then they think that’s funny.”
“It probably gets old,” Warren said.
“It does.” She slid off the bench. “Can I go on the swings now, Mom?”
“Of course.”
She went straight to the low swing she could get onto by herself. I watched her find her footing, then took Margaret’s card out of my bag. I’d gone back for it just before we left.
Warren read the name and opened the card.
“My dad made the pancakes that year,” he said. “I was six. All I did was pour in the blueberries.”
“Priya says your mother had six cards.”
He turned it over. When he saw the name of the school, he stood up. June was dragging her toes through the wood chips, making two shallow tracks under the swing. He sat back down before she looked over.
“I stopped by my mother’s apartment yesterday after the bakery,” he said. “I told her June was six. She asked me whether June still wore her hair in two braids.”
I waited.
“I’d just told her what June looked like,” he said. “I thought I must have mentioned braids.”
“At the bakery, her hair was in a ponytail.”
“I know. She turned her head when we were talking just now and I saw the yellow tie. The same one she had yesterday.”
June wore braids in her school picture. She’d made me redo the left one because it hung farther forward than the right. There were two prints. One was on our refrigerator. My sister had the other.
“Did your mother ever ask you for her picture?” I said.
“I didn’t have a picture to give her.”
I watched my daughter push herself a little higher. Beneath her coat, the hem of her shirt was sticking out on one side. I’d tucked it in twice before we left the house.
“I’d like to ask Margaret where she got it,” I said.
Warren took out his phone. Before he could make the call, June slowed the swing and looked toward the paved path. A woman in a dark green coat was walking toward us with a paper bag tucked under her arm.
I recognized the coat first. Margaret had worn it to the café the day she told me Priya could give Warren the family he deserved.
June jumped off the swing.
“Hi, Maggie!” she called.
Warren lowered his phone.
Margaret stopped just outside the playground fence. She looked at June, then at me.
I crossed the wood chips and put my hand on the swing chain. It was still moving.
“June,” I said, “where do you know her from?”
“The library. She reads with me sometimes when you’re picking out books.” She thought about it, then added, “She came to my school once too.”
I looked through the fence at Margaret.
June tugged my sleeve. “Remember when you were late and Mrs. Bell said somebody came to get me?”
I remembered it well. My car had broken down, and when I arrived, the receptionist had said another parent must have gone to the wrong classroom. Nobody had signed June out. I’d thanked them, taken her home, and forgotten about it.
June glanced over at Warren. Then she lowered her voice to the whisper she used when she thought she might be getting somebody into trouble.
“Maggie said Daddy sent her.”
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