“It’s me, Mabel.”
Her initial shock immediately hardened into cold resentment.be like “Did you come all this way to see how the girl you promised to come back for turned out?”
Damian stepped forward, desperate to explain. “Mabel, please—”
Before he could finish, little Lily appeared from behind her mother’s skirt, wrapping her tiny arms tightly around Mabel’s leg.
Damian lowered his gaze toward the child.
Something in the girl’s striking, clear green eyes made his breath catch. He had seen that unmistakable shade of green in only one other person throughout his entire life: his late mother.
“Mabel…” he whispered, his voice cracking. “How old is Lily?”
Every bit of color vanished from Mabel’s face. “Get off my porch.”
“I need to know, Mabel.”
Mabel pulled the little girl firmly against her hip, meeting his gaze without wavering.
“My daughter and I learned to survive without you,” she said, her voice deadpan and icy. “Your promises stopped meaning anything to me twenty-six years ago.”
She slammed the heavy wooden door closed.
Damian returned to his vehicle as one particular timeline began playing over and over inside his mind.
Four years ago.
The one time in twenty-six years he had returned to the town—for his uncle’s funeral. He had remained there for three days. On one rain-soaked evening, he encountered Mabel at a quiet roadhouse tavern outside town. They talked for hours, drinking too much and digging up memories they had believed were long dead.
They spent that night together.
The next morning, overwhelmed by emotions he thought he had buried decades earlier, Damian ran back to Houston without leaving a note. He never contacted her again.
Now Lily was three years old.
Damian stared at the cottage’s closed door, understanding that the child inside had changed absolutely everything in his world.
PART 2
Damian spent the entire night doing calculations he desperately wished he didn’t have to finish.
The timeline was undeniable. Lily was his daughter.
The following Sunday afternoon, he found Mabel seated on a wooden bench beside the park in the town square while Lily ran after pigeons across the grass.
He approached carefully. “May I sit down for five minutes?”
