I’m still lost in thought when Margaret’s voice comes through the intercom.
“Colin? The receptionist called there’s a... Mark Benoit in the lobby to see you. He says it’s urgent."
Mark.
I hesitate only a second. “Send him up.”
Minutes pass, and then my office door swings open. Mark doesn’t waste time with greetings.
He doesn’t look around.
He just heads straight for me. Jaw tight, eyes burning like he’s holding himself together by sheer force of will.
He takes a small flash drive from his pocket and sets it on my desk.
“What I’m about to show you,” he says, his voice low, “I’m doing for Cecily, and for my nephew and niece. Not for you.”
He pauses, meets my eyes. A warning, a promise.
“Prepare to get on your knees and thank me after you see what’s on it.”
I start to speak, but he cuts me off.
“One last thing,” he says, the warning clear in his tone. “This isn’t going to play in your favor.”
He holds the drive between two fingers, forcing me to take it from him.
My throat tightens. I swallow.
For Cecily. For Alicia. For Ethan. Without another word, I reach out and take it.
Chapter 18
that kind of “love”
Cecily
Mark’s sitting across from me, elbows on his knees, fingers wrapped around a mug he hasn’t taken a sip from in a while.
He studies me for a moment before asking, “How are you… with everything?”
It’s the first time we’ve seen each other this year. Mark spent Christmas in New Orleans with his grandmother, his only living relative. She’s eighty-eight now, doesn’t like leaving the house much, let alone traveling. He stayed with her for a few more weeks, soaking up every moment he could.
Last week, when I texted him after leaving my parents’ house and asked him to call when he had a moment, I already knew he had a full day ahead, a meeting with Renée and a few other commitments.
He called later that night, when I was sitting alone in my bedroom just after the kids had gone to sleep.
Ethan and Alicia could tell something was off, but I reassured them it wasn’t anything they needed to worry about. I couldn’t tell them the truth. Not when I was still trying tounderstand it myself… still trying to make sense of a world that had suddenly shifted beneath my feet again.
The moment I told him everything, Mark offered to fly back within a few days. But I told him it wasn’t necessary. I just needed his voice, someone steady to help me make sense of the mess my life had suddenly become.
Colin came by that night, after dinner. We didn’t talk. He sat with Alicia in the living room for a while, but she barely spoke. Just short, clipped answers, empty of anything that felt real.
But I saw it—the way his shoulders eased, just a fraction, simply because she was talking to him at all, for the first time since… everything.
Before leaving, he looked at me with that hollow kind of regret that can’t fix anything anymore.“I’m sorry,”he said. “I’m handling everything so you’ll never have to face the consequences of what I did again.”
I just nodded. There was nothing left to say.
