Megan’s face hardened. “She told me you knew everything. That you didn’t want the scandal. That you had agreed Lily should be placed somewhere private until decisions could be made.”
“I never knew.”
“I know that now.”
The words stunned me.
“You know?”
She looked away toward the dark field. “I didn’t at first. For months, I hated you because hatred was easier than wondering. Then I saw Claire outside the hospital one day.”
“Claire?”
“She was arguing with a man in the parking lot. I didn’t hear much. Just enough. She said your mother had promised this would all be handled quietly, and she was tired of paying people to keep things buried.” Megan’s mouth trembled once before she pressed it flat. “That was the day I realized you might not know.”
“Why didn’t you come to me?”
She looked back at me, incredulous. “Come to you how? Walk through your gates with two premature babies and ask security to please let in the woman you had accused of stealing from you? Call your office again so another assistant could document me as unstable? Send one more letter for Claire to intercept?”
I had no answer.
Megan lifted Noah higher against her shoulder. “Besides, by then I had another problem.”
“What problem?”
“Someone was watching us.”
A chill moved over my skin despite the warm night.
“At first, I thought I was imagining it,” she said. “A car outside the apartment. A woman asking questions at the daycare center I applied to. Then things went missing. Medical paperwork. A flash drive. One of Lily’s hospital bracelets.”
“Why would they want that?”
“Because it proved she existed.”
I looked toward the motel rooms, suddenly aware of every shadow.
“Are you safe here?”
“For tonight.”
“For tonight isn’t enough.”
“It has been enough for a year.”
The rebuke was quiet, and it found its mark.
I took a slow breath. “I won’t ask you to trust me. But let me help find Lily.”
“No.”
“Megan—”
“No,” she repeated, stronger. “You want to help because guilt just found you. I have lived with this every day. I have followed every thread, every record, every rumor. I have knocked on doors you wouldn’t know existed. I have sat across from people who smiled and lied because someone with money had reached them first.”
“Then use my money.”
Her eyes flashed. “Your money helped bury her.”
I flinched.
A door opened behind her. An older man stepped out from the motel office holding a towel, his gaze moving between us. He did not interrupt, but he did not go back inside either.
Megan noticed him and seemed to draw strength from his presence.
I lowered my voice. “I found the payments to Gregory. I have copies of records. I can get lawyers involved quietly. Not company counsel. Independent. I can hire investigators who weren’t part of this.”
“And when your mother finds out?”
“She won’t.”
Megan gave me a look that almost resembled the woman I had once known—the one who could hear weakness in a contract clause from across a table.
“Rowan,” she said, “your mother always finds out.”
I wanted to deny it. Instead, I remembered being ten years old, hiding a cracked vase behind the curtains, only for Evelyn Bellamy to find it before dinner and ask me whether lying felt more comfortable than courage.
She had trained me to fear disappointment before truth.
Maybe that was why Claire had fooled me so easily. She had not needed to create a weakness. She had only needed to find the ones my family had polished into virtues.
“Then I’ll make sure she finds out too late,” I said.
Megan studied me for a long moment. “You sound like him.”
“Who?”
“Your father.”
The words startled me.
My father had died six years earlier, and in my family, his name was spoken with careful admiration, like a portrait that must never be tilted. Henry Bellamy had been warm where my mother was composed, patient where she was exacting. He had loved Megan from the first Thanksgiving she spent with us because, as he told me later, “That girl looks at you like she sees the person under the suit.”
“What do you mean?” I asked.
She hesitated. “After your father died, I found something in his study. A letter addressed to you. I never opened it. Your mother took it before I could mention it.”
I frowned. “What letter?”
“I don’t know. But she was frightened when she saw it.”
My mother frightened was not an image I could easily imagine.
A soft cry broke the moment. Ellis had woken in the carrier, his tiny face scrunching with displeasure. Megan knelt, unfastened the straps, and lifted him with practiced care. Now both babies rested against her, small and warm and alive.
My sons.
I wanted to reach for them with a pain so physical it felt like thirst.
But I did not.
“May I see them?” I asked.
Megan’s arms tightened.
“Not hold them,” I said quickly. “Just see.”
Her eyes searched mine, perhaps looking for the old Rowan—the one who assumed permission came with wanting. After a moment, she turned slightly so the porch light fell across Ellis’s face.
He was astonishing.
Not because he looked like me, though he did. The blond hair. The shape of the brow. The small crease between his eyebrows as though he disapproved of the temperature.
He was astonishing because he was here, breathing, blinking sleepily against his mother’s shoulder while I stood before him as both stranger and father.
Noah slept through everything, one fist curled beneath his chin.
“They’re beautiful,” I whispered.
