Boston received us beneath a gray November sky.
Rain streaked the windows of the sedan as we crossed into the city, turning the lights along the Charles River into blurred ribbons of gold. I watched pedestrians hurry beneath umbrellas, couples sharing coats, students balancing coffee cups and backpacks.
Somewhere among them was Evelyn.
Somewhere, my children were growing up without knowing I existed.
Marcus sat across from me, his phone in one hand and the photograph in the other. He had barely spoken since we left Chicago. That worried me more than any warning could have.
“What did you find?” I asked.
He looked at me through the dim light inside the car.
“Her address is in Cambridge. A small brownstone on Fairmont Street. She works three days a week at a family resource center near the river.”
“And the man?”
“Julian Hart. Thirty-eight. Pediatrician at St. Vincent’s Children’s Clinic.”
I stared at the rain.
“Her husband.”
“That’s what the records say.”
The words landed more heavily than they should have. I had no right to be surprised. Three years had passed. I had walked away from Evelyn with my pride intact and my priorities unchanged. If she had rebuilt her life, I had no one to blame but myself.
Still, imagining another man standing in my kitchen, touching the same coffee mug, hearing the children cry in the middle of the night—
I closed my eyes.
“Do they have his name?”
“The children?”
“Yes.”
“Lily and Samuel Hart.”
Hart.
Not Moretti.
Not mine.
I looked down at the photograph again. Lily was wearing a yellow coat and a knitted hat with two pom-poms. Samuel sat beside her, holding a toy truck. Evelyn’s hand rested on the stroller handle.
What happened next changed everything… FULL STORY on the next page.
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