The earliest had been written in a child’s careful handwriting.
“Dear Sarah, where did the little girl go? Did she take her bicycle? Please write back. Caleb.”
My throat tightened.
He hadn’t forgotten me.
Not even then.
I opened another.
Then another.
The handwriting slowly changed as the years passed.
One teenage letter contained folded bills.
“I saved this from my allowance. Please use it for her. Please tell me she is okay.”
A later letter had been written in a messier, older hand.
“Grandfather says he’s leaving something for me when I’m old enough. Dad says I’ll never touch any of it without him. Maybe someday I’ll finally be able to help you myself.”
He had known.
On the back of the final letter, my mother had written five words in her familiar slanted handwriting.
“He isn’t like his father.”
I stared at them.
My mother had trusted Caleb before I was old enough to remember him.
Now I had to decide whether I had been foolish to do the same.
Then another memory surfaced.
Months before I knew I was pregnant, Caleb and I had been sitting on his couch when he casually asked whether I had owned a red bicycle as a child.
I laughed and told him yes, that Mom had bought it secondhand.
He smiled at the ceiling like someone who had finally answered a question he’d carried for twenty years.
The bookstore.
He had walked in during the Q&A.
He hadn’t found me by accident.
And every time I complained about the wealthy family my mother once worked for—how she lost everything afterward and died still feeling ashamed—Caleb listened without saying a word.
He had known exactly who I was talking about.
—
At sunrise, I strapped Nora into her car seat and drove to the address written on the oldest envelope.
The house seemed smaller than I remembered.
The garden looked almost exactly the same.
An older man opened the front door.
He was thinner than I had imagined, but the eyes told me immediately who he was.
William.
He looked at me for several seconds.
“You look exactly like your mother.”
I held Nora tighter.
“I need to speak with Caleb.”
“Caleb isn’t available.”
“Then tell me why he left.”
William glanced at Nora.
“Come inside. We can talk about this like adults.”
“I want an answer.”
His gaze dropped to Nora’s face.
For one brief second, something changed in his expression.
Recognition.
Then it disappeared.
His jaw tightened.
“He knew about the pregnancy. He chose to leave.”
