Lily awake, her tiny hand lifted toward the camera.
I could barely breathe.
“I didn’t know,” I said.
“I believe you.”
That was somehow worse than anger.
“You believe me?”
“I believe you didn’t receive the letters. I don’t know why.”
Neither did I.
A floorboard creaked upstairs.
Evelyn quickly gathered the papers.
“You need to leave.”
“I understand.”
“Do you?”
She placed the folder against her chest.
“You have a life in Chicago that cannot simply be placed beside ours because you discovered us. Lily and Samuel are not evidence. They’re not an inheritance. They’re children.”Hire Babysitters
“I know.”
“Do you?” Her voice trembled for the first time. “Because I have spent two and
a half years protecting them from instability. I won’t let you arrive with promises and disappear when the novelty fades.”
“I won’t disappear.”
“You disappeared before they were born.”
“I disappeared from you,” I said. “Not from them. I didn’t know they existed.”
“But you knew I was pregnant.”
The words stopped me.
I stared at her.
“I suspected,” I admitted. “You were trying to tell me something. I was too busy to listen.”
“And after I left?”
“I thought you wanted the divorce.”Find Divorce Help
“I did want the divorce.”
The honesty startled me.
“But not because I stopped loving you,” she continued. “I wanted a divorce because I realized I was married to a man who had no room in his life for me. I had begged you to come to one appointment. One. You sent someone else.”
