“Your father.”
The words startled me.
My father had died six years earlier, and in my family, his name was spoken with careful admiration, like a portrait that must never be tilted. Henry Bellamy had been warm where my mother was composed, patient where she was exacting. He had loved Megan from the first Thanksgiving she spent with us because, as he told me later, “That girl looks at you like she sees the person under the suit.”
“What do you mean?” I asked.
She hesitated. “After your father died, I found something in his study. A letter addressed to you. I never opened it. Your mother took it before I could mention it.”
I frowned. “What letter?”
“I don’t know. But she was frightened when she saw it.”
My mother frightened was not an image I could easily imagine.
A soft cry broke the moment. Ellis had woken in the carrier, his tiny face scrunching with displeasure. Megan knelt, unfastened the straps, and lifted him with practiced care. Now both babies rested against her, small and warm and alive.
My sons.
I wanted to reach for them with a pain so physical it felt like thirst.
But I did not.
“May I see them?” I asked.
Megan’s arms tightened.
“Not hold them,” I said quickly. “Just see.”
Her eyes searched mine, perhaps looking for the old Rowan—the one who assumed permission came with wanting. After a moment, she turned slightly so the porch light fell across Ellis’s face.
He was astonishing.
Not because he looked like me, though he did. The blond hair. The shape of the brow. The small crease between his eyebrows as though he disapproved of the temperature.
He was astonishing because he was here, breathing, blinking sleepily against his mother’s shoulder while I stood before him as both stranger and father.
Noah slept through everything, one fist curled beneath his chin.
“They’re beautiful,” I whispered.
Megan’s expression softened despite herself. “They’re loud.”
I laughed once, but it broke apart in my chest.
“I missed everything.”
“Yes.”
Their first breaths. First cries. First nights. The fear. The hospital. The tiny fingers. The paperwork. The naming. The learning of them.
I had missed it because I had believed a lie that flattered my wounded pride.
“I’m sorry,” I said.
Megan looked tired suddenly. So tired the anger could not hold her upright by itself.
“I know you are,” she said. “That’s the worst part.”
“What is?”
“That I still know when you mean something.”
The space between us filled with all the years before the ruin. The kitchen mornings. The rainy-day drives. The arguments that ended with apologies and cold pizza. The way she used to fall asleep reading with her thumb marking the page. The way I used to believe there were some things no one could take from us.
Then Claire’s name appeared on my phone again, lighting the darkness from inside my pocket.
Megan saw it.
“Go home, Rowan.”
“I’m not going back to her.”
“You are going somewhere. I can’t have you here when whoever is watching decides I’ve become interesting again.”
“Come with me somewhere safer.”
“No.”
“The boys need—”
“The boys need calm,” she interrupted. “They need clean bottles and sleep. They need a mother who doesn’t make decisions because a man showed up with regret in his eyes.”
I accepted that because I had to.
“What can I do tonight?” I asked.
She seemed surprised by the question.
“Nothing dramatic,” she said.
“I can manage that.”
A faint, unwilling smile touched her mouth and vanished.
“Bring diapers,” she said. “Size two. Hypoallergenic wipes. Formula, the kind in the gold can, but only if the seal is intact. No cash tossed in the dirt. No security men. No lawyers tonight. Leave it at the office with Mr. Hanley.”
I nodded. “Done.”
“And Rowan?”
“Yes?”
“If you confront Claire before we know where Lily is, you could scare the only people who know the truth into silence.”
I had already thought of that, but hearing Lily’s name made it real.
“I won’t confront her.”
Megan shifted the babies again. “You’ll have to lie convincingly.”
I almost smiled. “Apparently everyone else in my life has had practice.”
She did not smile back.
“I’m going inside,” she said.
I stepped aside.
At the door, she paused without turning. “There’s a clinic in Columbia. Tomorrow at nine. The boys have a checkup. Don’t come inside. Park across the street. If I decide you can meet the doctor, I’ll wave.”
It was not forgiveness.
It was a door opened the width of a breath.
“I’ll be there,” I said.
She entered the room and shut the door.
I stood in the parking lot long after the lock clicked.
Then I drove to the nearest twenty-four-hour store and bought every item she had listed. I spent fifteen minutes in the baby aisle staring at different bottle nipples like a man trying to decode a foreign language. A young cashier with purple glasses watched me pile diapers, wipes, formula, pacifiers, tiny blankets, and a thermometer onto the counter.
“First-time dad?” she asked kindly.
The question struck so deep I could only nod.
“Yeah,” I said. “Very first time.”
At home, Claire was waiting.
The house looked unchanged from the outside, all stone, glass, and careful lighting. Inside, flowers for the wedding sat in sample arrangements across the foyer table. White roses. Pale green eucalyptus. Claire had chosen them because, she said, they looked pure.
She stood at the foot of the staircase in a silk robe, hair loose, one hand resting on the banister.
“There you are,” she said. “Your mother has been calling me all evening. We were worried.”
The word we landed heavily.
“I needed air,” I said.
