The man was holding a child of about two who was dressed in a frilly pink dress with black strapped shoes and lacy white socks.

Not just any child, Mel thought as her heart thudded in her throat. Me. The child is me.

In the background was a ship, a big gray naval vessel. There was a band playing something rousingly military, and there were people milling about, talking all at once. She couldn’t hear the words, only the sounds.

She saw the man toss her in the air, toss her high. In the candlelit room her stomach leapt and dropped giddily. And here was love and trust and innocence. His eyes beaming up at her with pride and humor and excitement. Strong hands around her. A whiff of aftershave. A giggly laugh tickling her throat as she was caught close.

She watched the images shift. Saw her parents kiss. Oh, the sweetness of it. Then the boy who had been her father gave them a jaunty salute, tossed his duffel bag over his shoulder and walked toward the ship.

The ball in her hand was only pretty glass with inner fractures glinting rainbows back at her.

“My father.” Mel might have dropped the globe if Sebastian’s hands hadn’t held firm. “It was my father. He … he was in the navy. He wanted to see the world. He left that day from Norfolk. I was only two, I don’t remember. My mother said we went down to see him off, and that he’d been excited.”

Her voice broke, and she gave herself a minute. “A few months later there was a storm in the Mediterranean, and he was lost at sea. He was only twenty-two. Just a boy, really. She has pictures, but you can’t tell from pictures.” Mel stared into the globe again, then slowly looked up at Sebastian. “I have his eyes. I never realized I have his eyes.”

She closed them a moment, waiting until her system leveled a bit. “I did see it, didn’t I?”

“Yes.” He lifted a hand to her hair. “I didn’t show you to make you sad, Mary Ellen.”

“It didn’t. It made me sorry.” On a sigh, she opened her eyes again. “Sorry I can’t remember him. Sorry that my mother remembers too much and that I never understood that before. And it made me happy to have seen him, and them together—all of us together—even once.” She slipped her hands away, leaving the ball in his. “Thank you.”

“It was a small thing, after what you brought me tonight.”

“What I brought?” she asked as he rose to replace the ball.

“Yourself.”

“Oh, well …” Clearing her throat, she got to her feet. “I don’t know if I’d put it like that.”

“How would you put it?”