ON THE DAY I ENDED MY SEVEN-YEAR MARRIAGE, I DEPOSITED $150 MILLION INTO MY WIFE'S ACCOUNT AND TOLD HER, "CONSIDER THIS YOUR DIVORCE SETTLEMENT. I WANT YOU OUT OF MY LIFE." I BELIEVED THAT ENOUGH MONEY COULD MAKE OUR DIVORCE SIMPLE, PERMANENT, AND PAINLESS. BUT THREE YEARS LATER, A SINGLE PHOTOGRAPH OF TWO YOUNG CHILDREN MADE ME REALIZE THAT WHEN I SENT ELISE AWAY, I HADN'T ONLY LOST MY WIFE—I'D UNKNOWINGLY WALKED AWAY FROM MY OWN CHILDREN.
ON THE DAY I ENDED MY SEVEN-YEAR MARRIAGE, I DEPOSITED $150 MILLION INTO MY WIFE'S ACCOUNT AND TOLD HER, "CONSIDER THIS YOUR DIVORCE SETTLEMENT. I WANT YOU OUT OF MY LIFE." I BELIEVED THAT ENOUGH MONEY COULD MAKE OUR DIVORCE SIMPLE, PERMANENT, AND PAINLESS. BUT THREE YEARS LATER, A SINGLE PHOTOGRAPH OF TWO YOUNG CHILDREN MADE ME REALIZE THAT WHEN I SENT ELISE AWAY, I HADN'T ONLY LOST MY WIFE—I'D UNKNOWINGLY WALKED AWAY FROM MY OWN CHILDREN.
For seven years, I held my wife while she cried over every failed fertility treatment, while secretly paying a doctor to make sure none of them would ever work.
When I divorced her with a hundred and fifty million dollars and a cruel confession, she sent back every cent and warned me I would regret that day for the rest of my life, and three years later a single photograph of twins with my eyes proved her right.
But those children should have been impossible, and when I finally tracked down the doctor I had bribed, I learned that the man I paid to destroy her hope had been quietly protecting her the entire time.
CHAPTER 1: THE PRICE OF SEVEN YEARS
My name is Dominic Castell. For most of my adult life, I was one of the wealthiest and most powerful men in Lakemoor.
I built my fortune in real estate first. Then hotels. Then investment funds. Then shipping. By forty, the Castell name was on six skyscrapers along the waterfront and a hospital wing I'd never visited.
People called me ruthless. They weren't wrong. I almost never lost a negotiation. I never let feelings get in the way of a decision.
Elise was the only exception.
I met her at a charity gala when I was thirty-three. She was the florist. She'd done every centerpiece in the ballroom, white peonies and blue hydrangeas, and she was standing in a corner adjusting a vase while three hundred people in black tie ignored her.
I didn't ignore her.
We were married eleven months later.
For seven years, she was the only person who could make me forget everything outside our front door. I knew her favorite flowers. Ranunculus, pale pink. I kissed her forehead every morning before I left for work. I learned to like the terrible chamomile tea she drank every night.
And every time another fertility treatment failed, I held her while she cried.
"You're enough for me, sweetheart," I'd whisper into her hair. "You're more than enough."
Elise wanted a baby more than anything in the world. She'd wanted one since the first month of our marriage. We tried for a year. Nothing. So she went to see Dr. Martin Prentice, my family's physician for thirty years, an old friend of my father's, who referred her to a fertility program at his private clinic.
Six years of treatments. Pills. Injections. Monitoring. Every month, hope. Every month, nothing.
Every month, Elise sat on the edge of our bathtub holding a negative test and blamed herself.
What she never knew was that I'd arranged it.
I'd never really wanted a child with her. I was afraid a baby would tie me forever to a marriage I wasn't sure I'd stay in. My own parents' marriage had been a cold war fought over three children. I'd watched it. I'd sworn I'd never be trapped like that.
So in the first year, when Elise began her treatments, I went to Dr. Prentice privately. I told him my wife wasn't emotionally ready for a child. That I needed time. That she'd be devastated if he refused her outright.
And I asked him to give her treatments that wouldn't work.
He refused at first. Then I wrote him a check. Then another. Every year, for six years. A hundred thousand dollars a year, "for his clinic's research fund."
Dr. Prentice gave my wife placebo pills, saline injections, and empty hope. And I held her every month when it failed.
I told myself I was being sensible. Protecting both of us.
I refused to see how cruel it was.
Then, in the spring of our seventh year, Arianna Cole came back into my life.
My first love. We'd dated in college. She'd broken my heart at twenty-two and moved to Europe. Now she was back in Lakemoor, divorced, beautiful, laughing at my jokes in a way Elise hadn't laughed in years, because Elise had spent those years grieving babies I'd made sure she'd never have.
Being with Arianna woke something up in me I thought was long dead.
One Tuesday afternoon in April, I made my decision.
I transferred one hundred and fifty million dollars into Elise's personal account. Then, before I could lose my nerve, I texted her.
Elise. That's more than enough for seven years of marriage. I want a divorce.
Later that afternoon, I walked down Harbor Street with Arianna. It was windy. I pulled her coat tighter around her shoulders and brushed a strand of hair from her face. She laughed. I kissed her temple.
I didn't know Elise was standing across the street outside Dr. Prentice's clinic.
I didn't know she was holding an ultrasound photo in her hand.
That night, I came home with the divorce papers in a leather folder. Elise was sitting at the kitchen table. Her eyes were red. She had one hand pressed flat against her stomach.
"Sign them," I said, setting the papers in front of her.
She looked at me for a very long time.
"Did you ever love me, Dominic?"
I looked away.
"I gave you a good life."
"Except the truth."
Something about the way she said it made me angry. Defensive. And I said the one thing I should never have said out loud.
"I knew how badly you wanted children, Elise. But I made sure it wouldn't happen."
Her face changed. Instantly.
"What?"
"The treatments. Prentice. I paid him." I shrugged, like it was a business decision. "I didn't want a child tying us together if the marriage ended."
She went completely still.
Her hand, the one on her stomach, slowly curled into a fist.
For a long time, she didn't say anything. She just looked at me with an expression I didn't understand then. I understand it now. It was the look of a woman deciding, in a single second, never to tell a man something.
She picked up the pen and signed the papers.
The next morning, every cent of the hundred and fifty million dollars was back in my account.
I called her. "Elise. You'll need that money."
"I'd rather start over with nothing," she said quietly, "than live on the price you put on our marriage."
She came by that afternoon for one suitcase. At the front door, she turned around and looked at me one last time.
"Remember this day, Dominic," she said. "One day, you're going to regret it for the rest of your life."
I watched her walk down the driveway. I didn't stop her.
For three years, I didn't look for her.
Arianna and I moved in together. It lasted fourteen months. She said I was cold. She was right.
Then, one rainy evening in October, alone in my study, Elise's last words came back to me out of nowhere. One day, you'll regret it.
I picked up the phone and called my assistant, Marcus Feld.
"Find Elise."
He came back four hours later.
"She owns a small flower shop on Linden Avenue. In the old market district. It's called Ranunculus."
"Is she married?"
"No."
Then he set a photograph on my desk. Taken that afternoon from across the street.
Elise, standing outside a little shop with a striped green awning and buckets of flowers on the sidewalk. Beside her, holding her hands, two small children.
Twins. A boy and a girl.
My chest went tight.
The little boy had my dark hair. My eyes. Even his serious little frown was the one I'd seen in my own childhood photographs a thousand times.
"How old are they?" I asked. My voice sounded strange.
"Almost three."
A cold wave went through my entire body.
Elise had left three years ago. Twins nearly three years old meant she'd been pregnant the day she walked out.
And then I remembered our last night. The red eyes. The hand pressed against her stomach. The way she'd looked at me like she was trying to tell me something. Right up until the moment I told her what I'd done.
I stood up so fast my chair crashed to the floor.
"Where is that flower shop?"
Fifteen minutes later, I was in the back of my Rolls-Royce, racing through the rain toward Linden Avenue, the photograph crushed in my fist.
I'd dismissed her last words as anger. Spite.
She hadn't been threatening me. She'd been telling me the truth.
My car pulled up across the street from the shop. Through the front window, warm and yellow in the rain, I saw Elise behind the counter.
Two little children were sitting on the floor beside her, playing with a basket of flower petals.
My children.
But it wasn't possible. I'd paid for six years to make sure it wasn't possible.
Unless someone had undone what I'd paid for.
CHAPTER 2: RANUNCULUS
The bell over the door jingled when I walked in.
Elise looked up from the counter. She saw me. And every bit of color left her face.
She didn't scream. She didn't run. She just stepped around the counter, very calmly, and stood between me and the two children on the floor.
"Get out," she said quietly.
"Elise."
"Get out of my shop, Dominic."
The little girl looked up at me with big gray eyes. Elise's eyes. She held up a fistful of pink petals.
"Flowers," she announced.
The little boy didn't look up. He was frowning at a petal, concentrating, exactly the way I frowned at a spreadsheet.
I couldn't breathe.
"Are they mine?" I said.
Elise's jaw tightened. "What do you think?"
"It's not possible. I paid Prentice. Six years. The treatments were fake. You couldn't..."
"Mama," the little girl said. "Who's that?"
Elise didn't look away from me.
"Nobody, baby," she said. "Just a customer who's leaving."
She walked to the door and opened it. The rain blew in.
"Their names are Samuel and Stella," she said quietly, so the children couldn't hear. "They were born on a Tuesday in December. Six pounds each. Sam had to stay in the NICU for nine days. I sat beside him every night while Stella slept on my chest." Her voice didn't shake once. "You weren't there for any of it. You don't get to be here now."
"Elise. Please. How?"
She looked at me for a long moment.
"Ask your doctor," she said.
"I tried to tell you," she added, her voice dropping even lower. "That night. I had the photo in my purse. I'd practiced what I was going to say all afternoon. Dominic, it finally happened. We're going to be parents." Her eyes were wet but steady. "And then you told me you'd paid a doctor to make sure it never would. So I put the photo back in my purse. And I decided my children would never have to know their father tried to stop them from being born."
Then she shut the door in my face.
I stood on the sidewalk in the rain for a long time, looking at them through the window. Stella was laughing, throwing petals into the air. Sam was frowning, carefully picking them up off the floor one by one and putting them back in the basket.
I used to do that. My mother told me. I used to tidy up after my sisters.
I thought about my own father. Victor Castell. A man who'd built half of Lakemoor and never once came to a single one of my school events. Who'd shake my hand on my birthday. Who told me, when I was ten and crying because a boy at school had called me a spoiled rich kid, "Castells don't cry, Dominic. Castells win."
I'd spent my whole life trying to be him. Winning. Never letting anyone close enough to need anything from me.
And somewhere in a little flower shop on Linden Avenue, there was a boy with my frown who had never once been told that Castells don't cry. Who had a mother who held him every night in the NICU for nine days. Who'd been loved, completely, by someone who expected nothing back.
He was already better off than I'd been.
Without me.
Across the street was a little coffee shop. I sat in the window for three hours, watching Ranunculus. I watched a delivery man drop off buckets of tulips. I watched an old woman buy a single sunflower and Elise wrap it in brown paper like it was a wedding bouquet. I watched Sam and Stella eat crackers on the floor behind the counter.
At five o'clock, Elise locked the door, buckled the twins into a double stroller, and walked them down Linden Avenue toward a small brick apartment building two blocks away.
She was laughing at something Stella said.
I hadn't heard her laugh like that since the second year of our marriage. Before the treatments. Before I took that laugh away from her one month at a time.
I'd thought she'd be broken without me. Without my money. Without my name.
She wasn't broken.
She was free.
My driver had to come and get me.
CHAPTER 3: THE CHECKS
I didn't sleep that night. Or the next.
I called my lawyer, Harold Benning, at six in the morning.
"I have children," I said. "Twins. Two and a half. With my ex-wife. She didn't tell me."
There was a long pause. "Are you certain they're yours?"
"Look at the photo, Harold."
He looked. "Then you have rights. We can file a paternity petition. Request DNA testing. Visitation. Shared custody, even."
That was what I knew how to do. Hire lawyers. Win.
Harold drafted the petition in two days. While he worked, I drove past Linden Avenue every evening. I never got out of the car. I just watched the light in the window of Ranunculus go off at five, and the little stroller turn the corner toward the brick building.
One evening, Stella dropped a stuffed rabbit on the sidewalk. Elise didn't notice. I almost jumped out of the car to pick it up. Then an old man walking his dog stopped, picked it up, and jogged after them to hand it back.
Stella hugged the old man's leg.
I sat in my car and watched a stranger do what I should have been there to do.
On Friday, Elise was served with a paternity petition at her flower shop. In front of a customer.
On Saturday, she called me. For the first time in three years.
"You think you can buy them?" Her voice was shaking with fury. "You paid a doctor to make sure they'd never exist. And now you're sending lawyers to my shop?"
"Elise, I just want to know them."
"No, Dominic. You want to own them. Like everything else." She took a breath. "Fine. Take your DNA test. It'll prove they're yours. And then I'm going to stand up in front of that judge and tell her exactly how hard you tried to make sure they were never born."
She hung up.
My mother, Isabella, called that afternoon. Somehow she'd already heard.
"Twins, Dominic? Heirs?" She was practically glowing. "You must bring them home. The Castell name needs heirs. Get custody. Whatever it takes."
I hung up on her too.
Arianna called that week too. We hadn't spoken in a year.
"I heard," she said. Lakemoor is a small city for people with money. "Twins, Dominic. I always wondered why you never wanted children with me either."
"That's not fair."
"Isn't it?" She laughed, without humor. "You told me once that kids were a trap. That a man in your position couldn't afford to be tied down. I thought it was a strange thing to say about your own children." She paused. "I hope you're kinder to them than you were to her. Or to me."
She hung up.
I sat in my study for a long time after that, looking at the photograph of my son's frown.
I'd built my whole life around never being trapped. Never being tied down. Never letting anyone have a claim on me.
And I'd ended up alone in a house with nine bedrooms and nothing in any of them.
That night, I sat in my study and tried to understand.
Six years of placebo. Saline. Empty pills. Dr. Prentice had sent me a signed statement every January. Treatment protocol continued as agreed. I'd paid him six hundred thousand dollars.
And then Elise got pregnant. With twins. Twins. Exactly the kind of pregnancy fertility medication causes.
The real kind.
Dr. Martin Prentice had retired three months after my divorce. Sold his clinic. Moved away. I hadn't thought about it at the time.
I called Marcus.
"Find Martin Prentice."
Elise's lawyer called Harold on Monday. She was a sharp, quiet woman named Joan Ferris, who did family law pro bono for single mothers in the market district.
"Mr. Castell will have his DNA test," Joan said. "My client won't contest it. But I want you to tell your client something, Mr. Benning. If this goes before a judge, my client intends to testify, under oath, that he paid a physician for five years to sabotage her fertility treatment without her knowledge or consent. I'm told that's a form of reproductive coercion. Judges don't love it." She paused. "I'd encourage him to think very carefully about whether he wants that in the public record. Next to his name. Next to his children's."
Harold relayed the message that afternoon.
I sat at my desk and read it twice.
For the first time in my life, I had no move to make.
The court-ordered DNA test came back two weeks later.
Probability of paternity: 99.99%. Samuel Castell. Stella Castell.
Elise had given them my last name.
Even after everything.
That same afternoon, Marcus called me back.
"Mr. Castell. Dr. Prentice is living in a cottage in a little town called Saltmarsh, on the coast. Three hours north." He paused. "And sir. There's something else. I pulled the business records for Elise's flower shop. She opened it three years ago with an anonymous investor. Six hundred thousand dollars in startup capital. Wired from a charitable trust in Saltmarsh."
Six hundred thousand dollars.
Exactly what I'd paid Prentice.
CHAPTER 4: DR. PRENTICE
Dr. Martin Prentice was seventy-four. He opened the door of his little gray cottage by the sea in a cardigan, holding a cup of tea. When he saw me, he didn't look surprised.
"Dominic," he said. "I wondered when you'd come."
We sat in his small kitchen. Gulls were crying outside. He didn't offer me tea.
"You found the children," he said.
"How?" I said. "I paid you. Six years. You sent me statements. Protocol continued as agreed."
He looked at his hands.
"For the first five years," he said, "I did what you paid me to do. God forgive me. I gave your wife sugar pills and saline injections and watched her cry in my office every single month." His voice was thin. "I told myself you were a grieving young man who wasn't ready. That you'd come around. That it was temporary." He shook his head. "I'd known your father for thirty years. I owed him."
"And the sixth year?"
Dr. Prentice was quiet for a long time.
"In the sixth year," he said, "Elise came into my office in January. She sat in the chair across from me, and she said, Dr. Prentice, I think I'm broken. I think God doesn't want me to be a mother." He looked up at me with wet eyes. "She was thirty-four years old, Dominic. Healthy. Perfectly capable. And she thought she was broken because of me."
He set down his cup.
"I went home that night and couldn't sleep. The next month, I gave her real medication. Real treatment. I didn't tell you. I kept sending you those statements. Protocol continued as agreed. I suppose it was, in a way. Just not your protocol."
I couldn't speak.
"It took three months," he said. "In April, she conceived. Twins. Fertility medication does that sometimes." He almost smiled. "She came into my office on a Tuesday afternoon with the ultrasound. She cried so hard I had to hold her up. She said, I'm going to tell Dominic tonight. I'm going to give him the photo. Do you think he'll be happy?"
The Tuesday afternoon. Harbor Street. Arianna's coat.
The ultrasound in Elise's hand.
"She came back the next morning," Prentice said quietly. "With one suitcase. She told me what you'd said to her. That you'd paid me." His voice broke. "She looked at me like I was the worst man she'd ever met. And she was right. I was. Until that January."
I sat there, unable to move.
"She was going to tell me," I whispered. "That night. With the photo. And I..."
"And you told her you'd paid me to make sure it never happened," Prentice said quietly. "Before she could get a word out."
I put my face in my hands.
The red eyes. The hand on her stomach. The fist.
She'd come home with the best news of her life, and I'd handed her divorce papers and a confession.
And she'd decided, in a single second, that her children deserved better than a father who'd paid to stop them from existing.
"So you told her," I said. "That you'd switched the treatment."
"I told her everything," he said. "I told her that for five years, her husband paid me to steal her children from her. And that in the sixth year, I couldn't do it anymore. I begged her forgiveness." He swallowed. "She didn't give it to me. Not then."
"And the money," I said. "The six hundred thousand. Her flower shop."
He looked out the window at the sea.
"I couldn't keep it," he said. "Every dollar you paid me was the price of her grief. So when she left you with nothing, when she sent back your hundred and fifty million, I sold my clinic, moved here, put your six hundred thousand dollars into a trust, and wired it to her as an anonymous investment." He looked at me. "She doesn't know it was me. She thinks some kind old widow in Saltmarsh believed in her business."
"Why?" I asked finally. "Why give her the money? Why not just keep it? Or give it back to me?"
Dr. Prentice looked at me as if I'd asked a very stupid question.
"Because it was never mine," he said. "And it was certainly never yours. It was hers. Every dollar you paid me was a month she spent believing she was broken." He swallowed. "Six hundred thousand dollars. Sixty months of lying to her. I did the math once. Ten thousand dollars for every month I looked her in the face and lied." His voice cracked. "It wasn't nearly enough. But it was all I had."
I sat in that little kitchen by the sea and felt my whole life tilt sideways.
I had paid a man six years of bribes to destroy my wife's hope.
And that man had used my own bribe money to build her a new life.
The flower shop. The striped green awning. The little bell over the door. The life she'd built for my children without me.
I'd paid for all of it.
And I'd never even known.
CHAPTER 5: ALL OF IT
I didn't call my lawyer when I got back to Lakemoor.
I withdrew the paternity petition the next morning. Harold thought I'd lost my mind.
"You've got a 99.99% DNA match, Dominic. You'll win. Shared custody, at minimum."
"I don't want to win, Harold," I said. "I've won everything my whole life. Look where it got me."
Before I went, I called my mother.
"I withdrew the custody petition," I said.
"What? Dominic, those are Castell heirs —"
"They're Elise's children, Mother," I said. "They have my DNA. That doesn't make them mine. Not yet. Maybe not ever." I took a breath. "And they're not heirs. They're two little kids who like flower petals and crackers. If they ever let me be their father, I'm going to make sure nobody ever calls them heirs again."
She was quiet for a long time.
"Your father never would have said that," she said finally.
"I know," I said. "That's the point."
Then I went to Linden Avenue.
I stood outside Ranunculus for twenty minutes before I went in. Elise was alone behind the counter. The children were at daycare. When she saw me, her whole body tensed.
"I withdrew the petition," I said. "Before you say anything. It's done. You'll get the papers today."
She stared at me.
"I went to see Prentice," I said.
Something flickered across her face.
"He told me everything. The fifth year. The sixth. That he switched your treatment. That he gave you real medicine because you sat in his office and said you thought you were broken." My voice cracked. "You weren't broken, Elise. You were never broken. I was."
She didn't say anything. Her hands were gripping the edge of the counter.
"And he told me about the money," I said quietly. "Your investor. The six hundred thousand. It wasn't a kind widow. It was Prentice. It was the money I paid him. To make sure you'd never have Sam and Stella."
Elise sat down very slowly on the stool behind the counter. She put her hand over her mouth.
"Your bribes," she whispered. "My shop. My children's home. All of it."
"All of it," I said.
She was quiet for a long time.
"He never told me," she said finally. "I've hated him for three years. I've hated you more." She wiped her eyes. "And he was the one who gave me everything."
"He gave you what I tried to take," I said. "I'm not here to ask you for anything, Elise. Not forgiveness. Not custody. I just needed you to know the truth. All of it. Every ugly part." I swallowed. "You were right. I'll regret that day for the rest of my life."
She looked at me across the counter. A long, searching look.
"Why now, Dominic?"
"Because for the first time," I said, "I understand that money can't buy anything that matters. It can only ruin it."
I set an envelope on the counter. She didn't touch it.
"It's not money," I said. "It's a letter. For Sam and Stella. For when they're old enough. It tells them who I was. What I did. And that their mother was the strongest person I've ever known." I stepped back from the counter. "If you ever decide they should know me, I'll be here. Whenever you want. However you want. If you never do, I'll understand."
I walked to the door.
I put my hand on the door handle.
Behind me, I heard the soft sound of the envelope sliding across the counter. Paper on wood.
I didn't turn around. I couldn't. If she was throwing it away, I didn't want to see.
"Dominic."
I turned.
"Sam frowns like you," she said quietly. "When he's concentrating. It used to make me so angry. Every time I saw it." She looked down. "Lately, it just makes me sad."
EMOTIONAL ENDING
Six months passed before Elise called me.
"Stella's asking about her daddy," she said. "Kids at daycare talk. I don't want to lie to her."
I met them at a park on a Saturday morning in May. Elise stood a few feet away the whole time. Supervised.
Stella marched up to me in pink rain boots and looked me up and down.
"Are you the daddy?"
"Yes," I said. My voice cracked. "I'm the daddy."
"Where were you?"
I knelt down in the grass in front of my daughter.
"I was being very foolish," I said. "And very wrong. And I'm so sorry I missed you."
Stella thought about this very seriously. Then she handed me a dandelion.
"Okay," she said. "You can come back."
Sam didn't say anything. He just stood behind his mother's legs and frowned at me.
The exact same frown.
Every other Saturday after that, I came to the park. Then, months later, to the flower shop. Elise taught me to wrap a bouquet. I was terrible at it. Sam showed me how, frowning, very patient.
Dr. Prentice turned himself in to the state medical board that fall. He confessed to everything. He surrendered his license. Elise wrote a letter to the board on his behalf. She asked them to know the whole story. The five years. And the sixth.
I donated six hundred thousand dollars to a nonprofit that helps women going through fertility treatment pay for real care. Anonymously. It seemed right.
Last month, on Sam and Stella's third birthday, Elise let me come to the party at the flower shop. Just family. Just a few friends. Balloons tied to the buckets of flowers on the sidewalk.
When it was time for presents, I gave each of the twins a small potted plant. Ranunculus. Pale pink.
"Those were Mommy's favorite," I told them. "A long time ago."
"They still are," Elise said quietly from behind the counter.
She didn't look at me when she said it. But she didn't look away either.
After the party, when the twins were asleep in their stroller and the balloons were drooping, Elise and I stood on the sidewalk outside Ranunculus.
"I read your letter," she said quietly. "The one for the kids."
I waited.
"It was honest," she said. "Every awful part. You didn't make yourself look better than you were." She looked down the street. "I'm going to give it to them. When they're sixteen. And then they can decide for themselves what kind of man you are."
"That's fair," I said.
"It's more than fair, Dominic." She almost smiled. "It's more than you gave me."
"I know."
She turned to go back inside. At the door, she stopped.
"Prentice called me," she said. "After the medical board. He told me about the money. The investor." She looked at me. "He also told me you donated six hundred thousand to the fertility nonprofit. Anonymously."
"He wasn't supposed to tell anyone that."
"He's an old man with a guilty conscience," Elise said. "He doesn't keep secrets anymore." She paused. "Neither should you."
I don't know what the future holds. I don't know if Elise will ever forgive me. I don't know if I deserve it.
May you like
But I know that every other Saturday, two small children run toward me across a park, one laughing, one frowning.
And I know that the most valuable thing I ever owned was given away by the man I paid to destroy it.
