"Yes."
"You have a daughter."
"I had a baby," she said. "Eighteen years ago. I was twenty. I gave her up."
"Eighteen years." He was doing arithmetic. She could see him doing it, the way he did everything, carefully, checking his work. "Before me."
"Four years before you."
"And you never—" He stopped. He looked around the studio, at the bright empty bench, at the framed strangers on the walls, as if one of them might step down and tell him what he was supposed to say. "Fourteen years, Nat."
"I know."