"What else?"
She thought about it. "That it wasn't her fault. That she didn't do anything wrong. That her mother kept her promise and I didn't keep mine." She paused. "That I'm here. If she wants. And that it's okay if she doesn't."
"Then say that," Adam said. "Just say that." And he drank his water and rinsed the glass and went back upstairs, and she wrote the letter in forty minutes, and it was a page and a half long, and she did not change a word of it.
On a Saturday in late October, she drove to Cherry Creek alone and climbed the stairs above the candle shop. The sign on the glass door said OPEN. Inside, Calvin Mercer was photographing a very old man in an Air Force uniform that no longer fit him, while a middle-aged woman, presumably his daughter, stood off to the side with her hand pressed to her mouth. Natalie waited by the reception desk, beside the bowl of peppermints, and watched. Calvin did not hurry. He lifted two fingers, and the old man lifted his chin, and something came into the old man's face that had perhaps not been there in years, a kind of bearing, and the shutter made its soft sound, and the daughter began to cry.
When they had gone, Calvin came over to the desk. He did not seem surprised to see her.
"I wondered," he said.