Chapter 4
“It’s difficult. Not impossible.”
“Why?”
He was quiet for several seconds.
“Before you disappeared, I believed I could separate my life into rooms. Business in one. Family in another. You somewhere untouched.”
He looked at me steadily.
“Then you vanished because those rooms never existed anywhere except in my head.”
I lowered my eyes to the folder.
“When did you start this?”
“Three days after Savannah’s engagement ended.”
“That was months before you knew about the baby.”
“Yes.”
The significance settled slowly.
He had not changed his life because he had discovered an heir.
He had begun changing it when he believed I might never return.
“Declan…”
“I’m not telling you because I expect a reward. I’m showing you because you should know what kind of life I’m actually choosing before deciding whether I belong anywhere near yours.”
A door opened farther down the hall.
An elderly couple emerged, discussing breakfast.
The ordinary sound made everything feel strangely real.
I handed the folder back.
“My ten minutes are probably over.”
“Probably.”
He did not ask for more.
I started toward the stairs.
“Amelia?”
I turned.
“I’ll leave today if you want.”
I thought of June’s question.
Does the way someone loves you leave room for you to remain yourself?
“You can stay until tomorrow.”
Hope flickered across Declan’s face.
I raised a hand.
“That isn’t forgiveness.”
“I know.”
“It isn’t reconciliation.”
“I know.”
“It’s breakfast.”
His mouth curved slightly.
“I remember breakfast.”
The next morning, we met at a café near the courthouse.
No guards inside.
No private room.
No closed restaurant.
Just Declan sitting awkwardly in a wooden booth while a waitress named Marjorie called him “honey” and refilled his coffee without permission.
I ordered pancakes.
He remembered I liked blueberries but did not order for me.
A tiny thing.
I noticed.
We talked for nearly two hours.
Not about love.
About practical things.
Doctors.
Housing.
Chicago.
North Carolina.
What involvement I would allow during the pregnancy.
What I would not.
“You don’t come to appointments unless I invite you.”
“All right.”
“You don’t send people to follow me.”
“All right.”
“No expensive gifts.”
He hesitated.
“Define expensive.”
“Declan.”
“All right.”
“No decisions about the baby without me.”
“Obviously.”
“You say obviously, but your history with decision-making is not encouraging.”
“That is painfully fair.”
Another almost-laugh escaped me.
We were rebuilding something without admitting it.
Not a romance.
Not yet.
A language.
For the next three weeks, Declan remained nearby.
Not in my apartment.
Not even in town every day.
He rented a small house twenty minutes away and began traveling back and forth to Chicago while untangling himself from businesses his father had built.
Gavin became strangely useful.
Mrs. Whitaker decided he needed feeding.
Hannah developed a fascination with the fact that a man who looked like Gavin apparently knew nothing about repairing old window frames.
Our tiny circle expanded slowly.
And Declan kept every boundary I gave him.
When I invited him to the twenty-week ultrasound, he arrived twelve minutes early and sat beside me without touching my hand.
The technician smiled at the screen.
“Everything looks excellent.”
Declan stared at our child.
I watched him instead.
His eyes filled.
He blinked rapidly, pretending they had not.
“Would you like to know the sex?”
I looked at Declan.
He looked at me.
“You choose,” he said.
Together, we answered, “Yes.”
The technician smiled.
“You’re having a daughter.”
Declan’s face became impossibly soft.
“A girl?”
“A very healthy little girl.”
He laughed under his breath.
I had never heard that sound from him.
Later, outside the hospital, he stood beside my car.
“Can I ask one thing?”
“Yes.”
“Have you thought about names?”
“A few.”
“Can I hear them?”
I almost said no.
Then I realized he was asking.
Not assuming.
“Rose is one.”
His expression changed.
“My mother’s middle name.”
“I know.”
“You remembered?”
“I remember things too.”
For several seconds, neither of us spoke.
Then he said quietly, “Amelia, there’s something else you need to know.”
My stomach tightened.
“What?”
“Gavin found something while reviewing the timeline around the engagement announcement.”
“What kind of something?”
Declan looked troubled.
“You believed you happened to overhear Savannah asking about you.”
“I did.”
“I don’t think it was an accident.”
A chill moved through me.
“What are you saying?”
“Someone knew you were coming to my office that afternoon.”
I stared at him.
“Savannah?”
“No.”
“Then who?”
“That’s what we’ve been trying to understand.”
He opened his phone and showed me a photograph.
It was from a Voss Tower security camera.
The timestamp was 2:41 p.m., minutes before I had arrived carrying my ultrasound envelope.
A woman stood near the elevator.
I recognized her immediately.
My confusion must have shown because Declan said nothing.
He let me understand on my own.
Her name was Evelyn Hart.
For eleven years, she had worked as the senior administrator for the Voss family offices.
She was the woman who had always greeted me warmly.
The woman who sent flowers when my grandmother died.
The woman who had once told me that Declan seemed happier since meeting me.
And according to the security image, Evelyn had been standing outside Declan’s office seventeen minutes before my arrival, holding the engagement announcement schedule in one hand.
In the other was my hospital envelope.
My hospital envelope.
The one I had thought I carried into Voss Tower myself.
I looked at Declan.
“How did she get that?”
His voice was quiet.
“That is exactly what I need to ask her.”
May you like
And for the first time, I wondered whether the misunderstanding that had separated us had not simply happened.
Someone might have helped it happen.
