Rebecca prepared it—grilled fish, rice, and a simple salad—and served it in the dining room. As she moved back and forth from the kitchen, she caught small pieces of their conversation drifting through the doorway: old names, old places, the way people talk when they are reaching back into a shared past and pulling out memories to examine.
She paid it no particular attention. It was not her conversation to listen to.
But then she heard Benjamin’s voice drop into a different register, lower and warmer, the way a voice goes when it is getting close to something real.
“Do you remember those days, Caleb? That last year of school.”
Rebecca was in the kitchen covering a dish. She was not listening. Some of it.
“Some of it,” Mr. Caleb said.
“Some of it,” Benjamin laughed. “You always say that. You remember all of it. You just don’t like to say so.” A pause. “Victoria.”
Benjamin said the name clearly, casually, the way you drop a stone into still water without expecting much.
Rebecca set down the dish cover.
She was not sure why that name made her hands go still. She told herself it was a common name. It meant nothing. She stayed where she was and did not move.
“Benjamin,” she heard Mr. Caleb say. His voice was quiet and careful. A warning, almost.
But Benjamin was already moving forward the way old friends do, the ones who earned the right long ago to say things others would not dare.
“I’m just saying,” Benjamin said with a smile in his voice that Rebecca could hear even from the kitchen. “She was a good girl, Victoria. She deserved better from you, my friend. We both know that.”
He chuckled.
“Running away when she told you she was pregnant? Honestly, Caleb, I was ashamed of you.”
Silence followed, the kind that has weight to it.
“That was a long time ago,” Mr. Caleb said. His voice had gone very flat, very still.
“30 years,” Benjamin agreed. “Exactly.”
He paused, as if considering whether to say the next thing. Then he did.
“You know what’s strange? That girl out there, your new maid.” Another pause. “She looks like her. Victoria. Around the eyes, especially. I noticed it the moment she came around the corner.”
He laughed softly, as if trying to soften the edge of his own words.
“Probably just my imagination working too hard. I’ve been traveling. I’m tired. Ignore me.”
Mr. Caleb said nothing.
“Ignore me,” Benjamin said again, lighter this time. “Pass the salt.”