The girl came Monday through Friday, always peppermint tea and raisin toast. Then one weekend she showed up with a lady who was a version of her twenty years down the line. The whole time I was fixing their order, the skin on the back of my neck was prickling. When I turned around, the older one was staring straight at me. I served their drinks like I didn’t notice, but the older one, still staring, said, Sam Decker? Well, it’s a good thing I’d put down those mugs, or I’d have spilled all over the place. Who’s asking? I wanted to know. The older one said, I’m the quiet girl with the bangs.

JOURNAL ENTRY, MARCH 1971: At first I didn’t know why I was staring. Then he moved from the counter to where we were sitting, in the same way a certain someone walked from his desk to the front of Mr. Clark’s classroom, and I knew. I knew, but I waited because it seemed too strange, even though this was the neighborhood where we’d grown up, in a place called Sam’s, its walls covered in photographs. It’s funny to think those things didn’t come together in my mind until I saw Sam Decker leading with his shoulders as he walked.

When I said his name, your face went blank. Then your mouth dropped open. You’d invited me here because you thought I might like to meet a local photographer. “This is him?” you asked, and turned. “You’re the guy in my mom’s high school photo?” Sam backed away. “I never sent any photos,” he said. He moved to the light switch and started flicking the lights. “Closing time,” he announced to the room, though it was barely one in the afternoon. “I said closing time,” he yelled when his patrons complained it was too early.

Squirrel, he was so old! For almost twenty years, I’d been picturing Sam Decker at seventeen. I’d so completely given up on seeing him again that his memory had turned from something painful into something like a favorite toy from childhood, broken but still on its shelf. When that memory was replaced by this ramshackle man approaching our table, my first instinct was to wish I hadn’t come.

After the last of his customers had left, he returned to our table. “I read about you,” he said to me. “It was hard just going by the pictures in the papers, but I decided there couldn’t be more than one Lilly Preston.” He smiled and shook his head. “And here you are. Sitting beneath the blue lamp.” Then he nodded at you. “That must make you Samantha.”

“My name is Jane,” you said, giving me such a fierce look that I could feel its heat beneath my skin. “You named me after him, didn’t you?” you accused, pushing your chair from the table. Sweetheart, will you believe me when I say that, until that moment, I didn’t realize I had? Meanwhile, you started talking to him as if I weren’t there. “She told me she only knew you in high school. She always said my father was some guy named Charles.” You practically spat the name.