Not whether I had argued with my husband.
There was one second of silence.
Then:
“Is the baby safe?”
“Yes.”
“Are you safe?”
“Yes.”
“I’m sending Raymond. Thirty minutes. Don’t lift anything heavy. You’re six days postpartum. Let Raymond carry everything.”
I couldn’t speak.
He knew exactly how many days it had been.
“Simone?”
“Yes.”
“Thank you for calling me.”
Then he hung up.
Exactly thirty minutes later, headlights crossed the wall.
A black Cadillac Escalade stopped outside.
Raymond stepped onto the driveway.
He was sixty-eight now.
His hair had turned completely gray.
He moved more slowly.
But he was still Raymond.
When he reached the front steps, he stopped.
He looked at me standing there in pajamas, Wren against my chest, diaper bag over my shoulder, hospital bracelet still around my wrist.
His face changed in the same way I had seen once before.
Sixteen years earlier.
In a hospice hallway.
“Hello, Simone.”
That nearly broke me.
“Hi, Raymond.”
“Your father asked me to bring you this.”
He handed me a heavy cream envelope.
Across the front, in my father’s precise handwriting, were the words:
Simone Celeste Caldwell.
Not Tran.
Caldwell.
I placed it in my bag unopened.
