“After I gave birth, I brought my baby to meet the grandpa who raised me — but the moment he saw her face, he burst into tears and said, “This is impossible. You have no idea what you’ve done.” My grandpa was the only father I ever had after my parents died in a car crash. So when I got pregnant at 27 and the man I loved disappeared the same night I told him, Grandpa was the one who held me together. He had never met Caleb. I had kept putting off introducing them, telling …

I stepped backward into the garden.

Suddenly, something opened inside my memory.

A woman crying at a doorway.

My mother’s hand gripping mine.

A man’s voice following us down these same steps.

“Don’t come back.”

Then another image.

A little boy running barefoot behind us.

Mismatched eyes.

Caleb.

He was crying, too.

And then I remembered his hand holding the back of my red bicycle while I screamed at him not to let go.

“I won’t. Keep going.”

I reached the middle of the driveway before stopping.

Nora shifted against my chest.

William wanted me to believe that little boy had grown into a man capable of abandoning his daughter without looking back.

Maybe he had.

But I wasn’t going to accept William’s version of the story.

I turned around.

“William.”

He stared at me.

“I am not leaving until Caleb himself stands in front of me and tells me he does not want his daughter.”