I noticed.
Lucas climbed onto the bench beside her and opened his crackers. He placed his toy airplane carefully on the table between us.
“What’s your name?” he asked me.
“Jake.”
“I’m Lucas.”
“I heard.”
He smiled, and the dimple appeared again.
It took all my strength not to reach across the table and touch his cheek, just to prove he was real.
“Is that your airplane?” I asked.
He nodded. “It’s a rescue plane.”
“Who does it rescue?”
“People who get lost.”
Hannah looked down.
The words settled over the table with painful tenderness.
I turned to her. “How old is he?”
She held my gaze this time.
“Four years and seven months.”
The timing struck me so hard I had to grip the edge of the bench.
Four years and seven months.
Counting backward was simple. Brutal. Impossible to avoid.
Before the accident.
Before the hospital.
Before the letter.
Before the five years of believing she had walked away.
“Did you know when you left?” I asked.
Her eyes filled, but she did not look away. “No. I found out three weeks later.”
I closed my eyes.
Three weeks.
While I was learning to walk without holding the rail, she had been alone with a pregnancy test in a town where she knew almost no one.
“I tried calling you,” she said. “Your number was disconnected.”
“It wasn’t.”
“It was for me.”
I opened my eyes.
“My mother changed my phone while I was recovering,” I said slowly. “She said mine was damaged in the crash.”
Hannah’s jaw trembled. “Of course she did.”
Lucas looked between us. “Is this grown-up talk?”
Hannah immediately softened. “A little.”
“Is it bad?”
“No,” she said, though her voice caught. “It’s important.”
He considered this and pushed the cracker box toward me. “Important people can have some.”
I took one because refusing felt impossible.
“Thank you.”
He nodded gravely. “Mom says sharing makes hard days nicer.”
I looked at Hannah, and for a moment I saw the woman I remembered beneath the exhaustion. The woman who made soup for sick neighbors, who remembered birthdays, who cried at old songs but laughed if anyone noticed.