The first time I saw my ex-wife after our divorce, she was walking beside a highway outside Bellmere with two babies strapped against her body.
My fiancée laughed.
I forgot how to breathe.
“Adrian, slow down.”
Vanessa Cole leaned across the center console of my SUV, iced coffee wobbling dangerously in one hand.
“Seriously. Look over there.”
We had been driving back from one of my development sites on the outskirts of Bellmere.
It was late summer.
Heat rippled above the asphalt.
Dry grass bent along the shoulder.
I almost ignored Vanessa.
Then she grabbed my wrist.
“Stop.”
I hit the brakes.
Gravel cracked under the tires as I pulled onto the shoulder.
“What is it?”
Vanessa pointed through the windshield.
“There.”
At first, I saw nothing remarkable.
A drainage ditch.
A dented shopping cart.
Plastic bags.
A woman bending to pick up crushed aluminum cans.
Then she stood.
My hands locked around the steering wheel.
Claire Bennett.
My ex-wife.
The woman I had once promised to love for the rest of my life.
The woman I had ordered out of our home eleven months earlier.
SHE LOOKED NOTHING LIKE THE CLAIRE I REMEMBERED
Claire had always been petite.
Now she looked painfully thin.
Her brown hair was twisted into a careless knot.
Her face was burned pink from the sun.
Her sneakers were worn down.
Her clothes looked faded from too many washes.
And against her body—
two babies.
Twins.
One rested inside a cloth carrier across her chest.
The other was secured against her side.
I stared.
One of them opened his eyes.
Even from several yards away, something about his face hit me.
The forehead.
The narrow chin.
A tiny crease beside his mouth.
I had seen those features before.
In childhood photographs of myself.
I leaned toward the windshield.
“No.”
Beside me—
Vanessa laughed.
Not awkwardly.
Not nervously.
She laughed because she found the scene amusing.
“Well.”
She lowered her window.
“Looks like life caught up with someone.”
Claire turned.
Her eyes found mine.
For one terrible second—
the entire world narrowed to that look.
She wasn’t shocked.
She wasn’t angry.
She simply looked exhausted.
Somehow, that hurt more.
