"She asked me not to force it," Marcus said quietly. "She said if you weren't ready, she wouldn't push. She just wanted—Aaliyah, she just wanted to know him a little. Before—"
"Before what?"
He stopped. The unfinished sentence hung between them like a third person in the room.
Aaliyah looked at the photograph again. At the woman's face. At the familiar mouth, the familiar tilt of the chin, the eyes that were her own eyes given thirty more years and a different set of decisions.
"Ruth," she said.
Marcus nodded once.
"Your mother," he said, as if the word needed confirming, as if Aaliyah might have meant some other Ruth who wore this cardigan and carried this pouch and left before Mommy came home.