Chapter 4
I hadn't known Vanessa was engaged.
"I called Graham because I was upset and because I was selfish enough to know he'd come."
I looked through the kitchen doorway.
Owen was asleep in his room.
"You laughed."
Vanessa became silent.
Then she said, "I remember."
"Why?"
"Because Graham told you he couldn't leave me alone, and I said something like, 'Are you serious?' I laughed because I thought he was being absurd."
I said nothing.
"He hung up," she continued. "I asked what happened. He told me you had agreed to the divorce."
"And then?"
"I told him to go to the hospital."
My chest tightened.
"He didn't."
"No."
"Why are you telling me this?"
"Because for a long time I liked believing you had taken something from me."
Her voice was steady.
"It was easier than admitting Graham chose his grandfather's approval over our relationship long before you entered the picture."
That sounded painfully true.
"He blamed me."
"I know."
"You let him."
"I know."
I stared at the window.
Vanessa continued.
"I wasn't kind to you, Claire. I didn't do anything dramatic, but I enjoyed making you feel like an outsider whenever we were in the same room. I'm sorry."
I had not expected Vanessa Cole to become a person.
It would have been easier if she remained a laugh through a telephone.
"Thank you for saying it."
"I don't expect forgiveness."
"I'm not sure what I feel."
"That's fair."
Before she hung up, I asked one question.
"Is Graham still seeing you?"
Vanessa laughed again.
This time it sounded completely different.
"No."
"Why not?"
"Because about ten minutes after he told you to disappear, I realized the man I had spent years imagining was not the man sitting in front of me."
I closed my eyes.
"What happened?"
"I told him he needed to figure out why he'd rather lose everyone than admit he'd been hurt."
Then she hesitated.
"For whatever it's worth, Claire, I've never seen him look as shocked as he did when you actually left."
After the call, I stood in my kitchen for a long time.
Not because I wanted Graham back.
I didn't know if I ever would.
But because a story I had believed was simple had become complicated.
And complicated stories demanded different decisions than simple ones.
Three months later, Owen turned one.
Emma flew in from Chicago.
My father came too.
Mrs. Kim baked a small cake.
We celebrated in the courtyard beneath strings of paper lanterns while Owen wore a ridiculous yellow hat and showed considerably more interest in wrapping paper than presents.
It was a good day.
Near sunset, my father handed me a small package.
"This isn't from me."
My stomach tightened.
"Graham?"
My father nodded.
"You brought it across the border?"
"It's a book."
Inside was a children's edition of Treasure Island.
I recognized it immediately.
It was the same edition my father had read to me as a child.
Inside the cover, Graham had written one sentence.
For Owen. Your mother knows the good voices.
Nothing else.
No demand.
No signature beyond G.
I pressed my thumb against the page.
Emma watched from nearby.
"Are you okay?"
"Yes."
And strangely, I was.
Two months later, my company asked me to return to Chicago for a project.
A historic hotel was being renovated, and they wanted me to oversee custom furnishings with a local manufacturer.
The contract would last twelve weeks.
I almost refused.
Then I realized why.
Fear.
Not of danger.
Of history.
Of becoming the woman I had been before Vancouver.
That evening, I sat beside Owen's crib after he fell asleep.
"I think we're going to Chicago," I whispered.
He slept peacefully.
I smiled.
"Don't worry. We're coming back."
Three weeks later, I stepped into O'Hare carrying a toddler, a backpack, and more confidence than I had taken out of the city a year earlier.
My father met us.
He cried when Owen reached for him.
We stayed in a furnished apartment near the lake rather than the Mercer house.
I began work.
For nine days, nothing happened.
Then Daniel Whitaker walked into the hotel lobby.
"Claire."
I set down my coffee.
"Please tell me this is a coincidence."
"It isn't."
"What does Graham want?"
Daniel hesitated.
"Permission."
"For what?"
"To meet Owen."
Every instinct in me tightened.
"Why now?"
"He found out you were in Chicago."
"Who told him?"
"Your father."
I made a mental note to have a conversation with Dad.
Daniel continued quickly.
"Graham hasn't asked for custody. He hasn't asked to change the legal agreement. He said if you say no, he will accept no."
I crossed my arms.
"Why does he want to see him?"
Daniel looked almost amused.
"I asked him that."
"And?"
"He said he doesn't know how to explain wanting to know his own son without making it sound like he believes wanting it gives him the right."
That answer was so unlike the Graham I had married that I did not know what to do with it.
"What changed?"
"A great deal."
"That's vague."
"It isn't my story to tell."
I looked through the hotel's tall windows at the Chicago traffic.
"Tell Graham I'll think about it."
Daniel nodded.
Then he reached into his briefcase.
"There's one more thing."
I sighed.
"There is always one more thing with your family."
"This isn't from the Ashfords."
He placed an old photograph on the table.
My mother stood beside Arthur Ashford at a manufacturing conference nearly twenty years earlier.
Between them was a much younger Graham.
Maybe seventeen.
On the back, in my mother's handwriting, were six words.
He is better than he believes.
I stared at the photograph.
"I've never seen this."
"Neither had Graham."
"Where did you find it?"
"Arthur's private files."
I looked at the teenage boy in the picture.
He was smiling.
Not the controlled half-smile Graham used at public events.
A real smile.
My mother stood beside him with one hand on his shoulder.
"Did Graham know my mother?"
Daniel's expression softened.
"Apparently, yes."
"How well?"
"That's what Graham says he needs to tell you himself."
May you like
And suddenly the question was no longer whether the past had been manipulated.
It was how much of our shared past Graham had never told me at all.
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