An elderly woman stood on the other side.
“My name is Caroline.”
“How do you know me?”
She looked toward the dark street behind me.
“Frank called last month. He could barely speak. He said you might come one day.”
“Might?”
“He hoped he would find the courage to send you.”
“He said you might come one day.”
She opened the door wider.
“I think you should come inside.”
Every instinct told me to return to the hospital.
Instead, I followed her.
“Tell me what Frank lied about.”
Caroline did not answer immediately.
She opened a drawer beside the stove.
“Tell me what Frank lied about.”
Inside was a collection of metal cookie cutters.
Hearts.
Flowers.
Animals.
Apples.
And one small star.
I stopped breathing. It was identical to the cutter Frank had used every Sunday of my childhood.
Inside was a collection of metal cookie cutters.
“Where did you get that?”
Caroline lifted it carefully.
“It belonged to Frank.”
“No. His is at my house.”
“He had two, dear,” she said.
A photograph rested beneath the cutters.
Caroline picked it up and handed it to me.
A little girl stood beside a kitchen table, smiling over a plate of star-shaped apple pancakes.
