Martin turned his computer monitor toward me.
The security system stored footage for thirty days.
He clicked through several folders before finding the previous afternoon.
2:41 p.m.
A silver sedan pulled into the lot.
A man stepped out.
My heart stopped.
He had Robert’s height.
Robert’s shoulders.
Robert’s slow, slightly uneven walk.
He even wore the kind of gray wool coat Robert had favored every winter of our marriage.
The camera did not clearly show his face until he entered the office.
Then he turned.
I stopped breathing.
“Robert.”
The name escaped my mouth like a prayer.
The resemblance was impossible.
The same gray hair.
The same heavy eyebrows.
The same narrow jaw.
But something was wrong.
Robert had broken his nose playing baseball when he was seventeen. The slight bend had always been visible from the side.
This man’s nose
was straight.
I moved closer to the screen.
