The ward was bright with morning sun. A nurse had opened the window. There was a bird singing outside, a loud, cheerful, completely inappropriate bird. Victoria had looked at Rebecca and held her hand and said her name once, softly, like a full sentence. Then she was gone.
Rebecca was 16 years old. She was alone. And she had a question that now had no one left to answer it.
She finished school on a scholarship for children who had lost parents. She worked small jobs, helping at a grocery store, washing clothes for neighbors, running errands for a nearby pharmacy. She learned to stretch money the way her mother had taught her, carefully, without waste. She built a small life, quiet, independent, dignified.
But she had never been able to stop wondering, not in a loud, angry way. Rebecca was not an angry person. It was a still, deep wondering, the kind that lives at the bottom of you, that you carry around without noticing until something bumps into it and reminds you it is there.
Who was he? Was he still alive? Did he ever think about her? Did he ever wonder what happened to the child he had walked away from? Did he even remember?