“Was it Schmidt? With Mom?”
Dad looks startled. “What makes you say that?”
“I don’t know. Mom used to love sunflowers.”
He nods and even smiles a little, then slurps up a gulp of
shake. “She did.”
“Schmidt grew themwhen I was little,” I go on. “He doesn’t
grow them anymore. I thought maybe he grew them for Mom.”
“So this theory that your mother had an affair is based on
sunflowers.”
“Well, yeah. I guess.”
And in the early days after Mom left, Lieutenant Escher-
mann asked me where I thought she’d gone. I figured she’d
moved into Schmidt’s enormous place, and that she’d come
back when she stopped being mad at Dad. The house is big
enough that she could’ve sneaked in through the underground
tunnel, I’d fantasized, and Schmidt wouldn’t have even noticed.
I never considered, until now, he might’ve offered her refuge
in his arms.
“Henry Schmidt wasn’t your mom’s style.”
I want to ask how he can be so sure.
Schmidt made my mother laugh. At least once.
For a few seconds, the only sounds in the house are com-
prised of chewing and sipping.
“Anyway, about Trina. I promise you, when all the dust
clears, she’s going to turn up somewhere, with a new life of her
choosing. Safe and far away from her family.”
Maybe he’s right. And for a second or two, I feel better.
But if Trina took off ten years ago, Dad wasn’t exactly mar-
ried anymore, either. He and my mom weren’t together. He was
with Heather. It’s another lie.
And the pieces of a puzzle I didn’t know I was working on
36
