“Because I couldn’t let go of the last thing I thought you wanted me to know.”
For the first time, her composure broke. She turned away quickly, pressing two fingers beneath her eyes. I remembered that gesture. Rachel had always refused to cry in front of people until she felt safe, and sometimes not even then.
Lily noticed. “Mommy?”
“I’m okay, sweetheart.” Rachel’s voice warmed instantly. “Just something in my eye.”
Lily looked at me suspiciously, as if I might be responsible for whatever had gotten into her mother’s eye. Maybe I was.
I knelt slowly in front of the stroller. “Hi, Lily.”
She studied me with solemn authority. “Your eyes are like mine.”
“Yes,” I said. My throat tightened. “They are.”
“Mommy says mine are storm eyes.”
I looked up at Rachel. She was watching us with a face I couldn’t read.
“My mother used to say the same thing about mine,” I told Lily.
She brightened. “Do storms have birthdays?”
Noah sighed. “Storms don’t have cake.”
Sophie said, “Everything should have cake.”
And there it was—life, stubborn and sweet, going on in the middle of ruin.
Rachel checked her watch. “They need lunch soon.”
“Come to my apartment,” I said before fear could stop me. “We can compare the letters. We can figure out what happened.”
Her expression closed. “I don’t know if that’s a good idea.”
“I understand. Then a café. Anywhere public.”
She looked at the children, then at me. “There’s a small place on Spruce with a back table. They know us there.”
“Okay.”
She hesitated. “You should call Noelle.”
The sound of my fiancée’s name struck me with fresh guilt. “I will.”
Rachel’s mouth tightened, not with jealousy, but with an exhausted kind of compassion. “She deserves better than being left in a park with no explanation.”
“She does.”
“So did we,” Rachel said.
I had no answer.
The café on Spruce was warm and narrow, with fogged windows and mismatched chairs. The owner greeted Rachel by name and brought crayons before she asked.
He glanced at me only briefly, but there was recognition in his look—not of who I was, but of what I might become in Rachel’s life, and therefore in the children’s.
We settled at a table near the back. Rachel ordered grilled cheese cut into triangles, apple slices, milk with lids, and coffee she did not seem likely to drink. I texted Noelle with trembling fingers.
I’m with Rachel. I’ll explain everything tonight. I’m sorry. None of this is what it looks like, but it is serious.
Her reply came several minutes later.
I’ll be at my apartment. Don’t make me ask twice.
I set the phone down.
Rachel watched me. “She loves you.”
“I know.”
“Do you love her?”
The question should have been simple. A week ago, it would have been. I loved Noelle’s steadiness, her intelligence, the way she remembered people’s birthdays and gave direct answers.
I loved the life we had planned because it seemed safe. After Rachel, safety had felt like love.
But now I looked at the three children arguing softly over whether a blue crayon was really blue or secretly purple, and all my definitions failed me.
“I care about her deeply,” I said.
