“Are you friends?”
Were we? Had we ever really been friends?
“We used to be,” I said carefully. “A long time ago.”
“How old are you?” she asked, with the blunt curiosity only children possessed.
A smile tugged at my lips. “How old do you think I am?”
She squinted, thinking hard. “Um…fifty-four?”
I laughed—really laughed—for the first time in years. “Not quite. I’m thirty.”
“That’s still pretty old,” she said matter-of-factly.
“How old are you?” I asked, even though I already knew.
“Four!” She held up her hand, fingers spread wide. “I had my birthday last month. Mommy got me a big cake, and Uncle Alexander let me stay up late.”
Uncle. She called Alexander Uncle, not Dad. She was four years old.
The timeline lined up perfectly. Isabella had gotten pregnant that night in my study, had carried my child, given birth to her, raised her alone for five years while I…
While I’d been playing house with Selene. Living in ignorance. Missing everything.
The nanny stepped forward quickly, her hand going protectively to Adele’s shoulder. “Excuse me, sir,” she said cautiously, eyes flicking from me to the little girl. “Can I help you? Adele, you know you shouldn’t talk to strangers.”
Adele frowned, looking between us. “But he’s not a stranger,” she said confidently. “He knows Mommy.”
The woman’s brows furrowed. “You…know Ms. Crawford?”
“Yes,” I said evenly, keeping my voice calm but firm. “I’m an old friend. We grew up together.”
She hesitated, clearly debating whether to believe me. Adele tugged her hand and said, “You said you have class soon, remember? You’re going to be late, and Mommy says it’s not good to be late.”
“I can’t leave until your mommy returns.”
“It’s okay,” I said, not taking my eyes off my daughter. “I’m…I’m a friend of her mother’s. I can wait with her.”
The nanny looked uncertain, but Adele had already plopped onto one of the chairs, pulling out a coloring book from her bag.
“Do you want to color with me?” she asked, looking up at me with those big brown eyes.
“I’d love to.”
We sat on the floor of Isabella’s office, Adele chatteringaway about her favorite colors—purple and gold—her favorite food, mac and cheese (but only if Isabella made it), and her best friend at her school in Zurich—a boy named Nathan who could do a backflip.
And I soaked in every word like a man dying of thirst.
This was my daughter. My child. And I’d missed five years of her life—five years of first words and first steps and bedtime stories and scraped knees. Five years during which Isabella had done things all alone because I’d been too much of a coward to choose her.
The door opened, pulling me out of my thoughts.
I looked up to find Isabella frozen in the doorway, her face draining of color as her eyes landed on me and Adele. Together.
For a heartbeat, no one moved. The air between us cracked open with guilt, shock, love, pain, all tangled into one unbearable silence.
Adele shot up and ran to Isabella with a grin.