The man who—some part of me still aches to believe—didn’t know.
My fingers clench around the door handle, bloodless and trembling.I stare through the windshield like it might give me more time, but it doesn’t.All it gives me is the ache of everything I’ve carried up this mountain.
Alec’s voice breaks softly through the thick, fragile silence.“You sure you don’t want me to come up with you?”
No.Yes.Maybe.
I want to hide behind his warmth.I want to crawl into his lap and pretend I don’t need this moment as badly as I do.
“I’m sure,” I say, voice small.“If he slams the door in my face, that’ll be easier without an audience.”
Alec doesn’t argue.He just gives me that look—the one that strips away all my armor.The one that sees straight through to the small, scared girl still sitting inside me.
“He won’t slam the door,” he says.
“You don’t know that.”
“I know his daughter,” he replies quietly.“And if she had been mine, I wouldn’t slam the door.”
That does me in.My throat closes around the lump rising too fast to swallow.
In the back seat, Mila hugs her stuffed frog to her chest.Her big eyes find mine, full of worry and something else—faith.
“Do you want me to come?”she whispers.
My heart cracks down the middle.“Not this time, sweet girl.I’ll call for you when I’m ready.”
She nods, as if that’s enough.As if she knows I’ll come back changed.“I’ll save you a gummy bear.”
A laugh hiccups out of me, watery and fragile.“Good.I might need ten.”
Then I open the door before I can talk myself out of it.
The air hits me like ice.It feels Stephen King-creepy, but I ring the doorbell.
Silence.
Then footsteps.
And then the door opens, and he’s there.
Thomas Walls looks like time hasn’t just passed—it’s lived in him.His flannel shirt is worn, sleeves pushed up over forearms that look like they’ve built things, carried things, and maybe broken a few too.His eyes—brown like mine—go wide.The kind of wide that says this isn’t real.
His face goes pale.His hand drops from the doorframe.His mouth parts, but no words come right away.Just a raw, ragged silence that settles between us like a ghost.
“You ...”His voice breaks.He tries again.“You look just like her.Like my Lina.”
My knees go soft.
That name—Lina.
The girl he loved.
The woman who died with secrets in her heart and a letter in her drawer.
“I—yeah,” I whisper.“I know.I look like her.”
He stares at me like I’m something holy and terrible.Like I’m a miracle and a reckoning all at once.
