“When?”
“The first time I was twelve.”
I calculated quickly.
I would have been nineteen.
At university.
“The second?”
“Sixteen.”
I remembered that year.
Father had told us he was traveling to Boston for a charity conference.
Clara must have seen something change in my face.
“He was only there for an afternoon,” she said.
“Where?”
“A public garden.”
I stared at her.
“What did you do?”
“Walked.”
“That’s it?”
“We had coffee. He asked about school. I told him I hated mathematics. He said that proved I couldn’t possibly be related to him.”
Despite myself, I knew exactly how my father would have delivered the line.
Dryly.
With one corner of his mouth slightly raised.
A memory stirred: my father teaching me algebra at the kitchen table, refusing to let me use a calculator.
I hated that Clara possessed a version of him I had never known.
