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He was the only thing that kept the walls from crushing me. There had to be a reason he hadn’t come yet. Work. Samantha keeping him away. Maybe he thought I blamed him. I didn’t. I never could. I took the fall because I loved him. Protected him without even knowing that was what I was doing at the time. He’d see that eventually. He’d come.

The days blurred, but that hope stayed.

An officer stopped by my station in the laundry.

“You’ve got visitors, Jameson.”

My heart slammed against my ribs so hard I felt it in my throat.

Richie. He finally came.

I wiped my damp hands on my uniform, smoothed the ugly fabric as best I could, and ran my fingers through my hair, trying to coax some life back into it. For the first time in years, a real smile pulled at my mouth. I could feel it cracking the numbness.

I followed the officer through the corridors, each step lighter than the last. The visitation room door opened, and I stepped inside, already scanning for his tall frame, that intense gaze that always made everything else disappear.

But it wasn’t Richard.

Samantha sat at one of the tables with both boys beside her. Seth was quietly reading a book, but I barely looked at him.

All I saw was Luke.

He was seven years old now.

His legs swung beneath the chair because his feet didn’t quite reach the floor. His blonde hair had gotten darker than I remembered, though it still caught the ugly fluorescent light. The last time I’d seen my son, he was three weeks old. He’d been small enough to fit against my chest, with tiny fingers that curled around mine and eyes that could barely stay open for more than a few minutes at a time. The boy sitting beside Samantha looked nothing like the baby I’d spent seven years trying to remember. His features made him look more like Richard than I was prepared for. But those bright blue eyes were still mine.

My baby.

Except he wasn’t a baby anymore. I had missed all of it.

My smile disappeared as I looked toward the door again.

Where the hell was Richard?

Maybe he was running late. A meeting that went longer than expected. Richard had never let anyone else’s schedule dictate his own. He’d walk through that door any second now. I held on to that explanation as I crossed the room.

Samantha stood when I reached the table. “Hi, Maggie.”

I barely looked at her before checking the door again. “Where’s Richard?”

She hesitated. That hesitation made my stomach tighten.

“He probably got held up at work,” I said before she could answer. “I know how he is.”

Samantha sat back down and rested her hand near Luke’s shoulder.

“I wanted him to meet you.”

Meet me.

I sat down across from him, trying not to let those words get to me.

My own son had to meet me.

Up close, the seven years between us became impossible to ignore. I didn’t know what his first word had been. I hadn’t watched him take his first steps or sent him off to kindergarten. I didn’t know what foods he liked, what made him laugh, what he was afraid of, or what he wanted for his birthday. I had never heard the sound of his voice.

I didn’t know my own son.

“Hi, Luke.”