“Where is Mara?”
“In the hospital. She had complications after the birth.”
“Why do you have her child?”
“Because she asked me to bring Wren here if anything went wrong.”
“Why here?”
Theo held my gaze.
“Because she’s Dad’s daughter.”
I sat down.
The room tilted around me.
“No.”
“She was born two years before Dad met you.”
“He told me he had never had children.”
“He lied.”
Theo placed the suitcase on the rug and opened it.
Inside were letters, bank records, photographs and legal documents.
The same young woman appeared throughout the photographs.
As a child beside Warren at a deserted picnic ground.
At thirteen, holding a certificate.
At sixteen, standing beside a secondhand car.
At graduation.
Warren had aged from photograph to photograph.
He had not been a distant family friend.
He had been a father.
Just not publicly.
Theo told me what happened after he left.
For three nights, he slept in the storage room behind the art shop where he worked.
When the owner discovered him, she contacted a youth housing center called Haven Row.
Theo was given a temporary room and later found work designing signs for local businesses.
He still had the envelope from Warren’s office.
