Giselle studied me for a moment longer before speaking again.
“And how exactly are you going to hide her?”
The wordherdid not need clarification.
Helena existed in every corner of my life. She appeared in photographs on my phone, in the crayon drawings pinned to the refrigerator, in the routine conversations my colleagues overheard when I talked about picking her up from kindergarten.
“You can’t hide a child forever,” Giselle continued gently. “Especially not if he’s going to be working here now.”
I folded my arms across my chest instinctively.
“I’ll manage.”
Giselle’s expression shifted, not judgmental but thoughtful.
“Or maybe you won’t hide her,” she said slowly.
My gaze snapped toward her.
“What does that mean?”
She hesitated before answering.
“I mean… after all, heisher father. She has every right to know him,” Giselle added carefully. “And he has a right to know her too.”
“The hell he does.”
The response left my mouth louder than I intended. The sudden silence around us told me immediately that half the room had heard it. Several colleagues glanced in our direction, curiosity flashing briefly across their faces before they tried unsuccessfully to pretend they were not listening. I inhaled slowly and lowered my voice.
“The hell he does,” I repeated more quietly.
Giselle did not flinch.
“He lied to me,” I continued, the anger rising again now that the memory had been forced back into the open. “I didn’t exist in his life the way he let me believe I did. I didn’t have a place there. Not in his plans. Not in his future.”
My fingers tightened against my arms.
“While I was giving him everything, he was already engaged to someone else.”
Giselle listened without interrupting.
“He doesn’t have any right to know her,” I said firmly. “He doesn’t have any right to meet her.”
The words felt heavier once they were spoken aloud, but I refused to take them back.
“He had his chance,” I continued, my voice dropping lower. “And he threw it away.”.
“People make mistakes.”
“That wasn’t a mistake.”
She watched me carefully. “You still care about him.”
The observation was understated. Annoyingly accurate.
“That’s not the point,” I said quickly.
“Then what is?”
