You look exactly like your mother,” William said.
I held Nora tighter. “I need to speak with Caleb.”
“Caleb isn’t available.”
“Please get off my porch.”
“Then tell me why he left.”
William glanced at Nora. “Come inside. We can talk about this like adults.”
“I want an answer.”
His eyes dropped to Nora. For one brief second, something flickered across his face – recognition.
Then it was gone.
Something folded open inside me.
His jaw tightened, and when he looked at me again, his expression was perfectly controlled.
“He knew about the pregnancy. He chose to leave.” His voice was calm now. “That is the answer you drove all this way for. Take your daughter and go home.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“That is not my concern. Please get off my porch.”
I stepped back into the garden, and something folded open inside me.
“Don’t come back.”
A woman crying at a door. My mother’s hand wrapped tightly around mine.
A man’s voice following us down these same steps.
“Don’t come back.”
Then another image surfaced. A little boy running barefoot after us. Mismatched eyes. Caleb. He was crying, too.
And suddenly I remembered something else: his hand gripping the back of my red bicycle while I screamed at him not to let go. “I won’t. Keep going.”
“You are being hysterical.”
I made it halfway to the car before I stopped.
Nora shifted against my chest.
William wanted me to believe that boy had grown into a man who could abandon his own daughter without looking back. Maybe he had.
But I wasn’t going to take William’s word for it.
I turned back. “William.”
“I am not leaving until Caleb himself stands in front of me and tells me he does not want his daughter.”
