"She's a very good judge of character."
"She is." He set the guitar case down on the linoleum. He reached into the pocket of his leather jacket, and his fingers found the velvet box and moved past it, and found the other thing instead, the thing he had taken from the cigar box on his bedroom bureau before he left, the cigar box full of coins from Belgium and Denmark and Germany and France that he had dumped there in August of 1974 and never looked at again. He held it out to her on his open palm. It was a small, brassy coin, worn smooth, with a woman sowing seeds on one side and a 1 on the other.
"I owe you a franc," he said.
Delia looked at the coin. She did not take it.
"I read your letter," Wes said. "My mother had it. Mr. Dombrowski brought it to the door in May of 1974, and she sent it on to Amsterdam, and it came back, and she kept it in her stationery box for three and a half years because she didn't know how to give it to me. That's why she said *Hart* like that, on the phone. She knew who you were, Delia. She knew before you got out of the car. She knew before I did." His voice wavered. He let it. "Everybody knew but me."
Delia's hand had gone to her mouth.
"You were right," he said. "I never looked up. I've been not looking up for three years. I'm sorry. I'm sorry I didn't see you. I'm sorry I stood in your bakery every Saturday and ordered a cruller from the girl I'd been looking for in four countries and didn't know her. I'm sorry I made up a whole woman with a cat rather than admit I'd once met a real one and lost her in the wash. I'm sorry about this morning. I was wrong about all of it." He took a breath. "And you were right about the bridge."
"Wes," she whispered.
"I wrote it. In Milford. At a red light. Can I play it for you? It's not very good."