sat a thick brown envelope with my full name written across it.
“What’s inside?” I asked.
“You’ll open it after dinner.”
“Why not now?”
“Because if you open it now, you may not want to stay until the end.”
His answer made my blood run cold.
I started thinking that he might be seriously ill and that the envelope contained his will. Then I noticed that his friends kept
avoiding eye contact with me. We ordered our food, but I couldn’t swallow a single bite.
The men spoke about their younger years. Occasionally, they mentioned a woman named Laura, but whenever her name
came up, my father tensed. Laura was my mother’s name.
“You really do look like her,” Robert finally said.
“Did you know my mother well?”
He was about to answer when my father interrupted him.
“We didn’t come here to talk about her.”
