"Mom," he said. "Did you know?"
Carol was silent for a long time. Out the window, a man in a golf cart drove slowly past, waving to someone Eric could not see.
"I didn't know," she said finally. "I wondered. For about a day."
"When?"
"At the hospital. When I first held him." She turned her glasses over in her fingers. "He had so much dark hair, Eric. And there was something about the shape of his face. I remember thinking, that's a Lindqvist baby? With that hair? And I remember counting backward. Old women always count backward, it's a terrible habit. And I thought about the summer she was gone."
"And you never said anything."
"No."