The mistake that made us

Chapter 6

Something moved across his face. "The twins are safe. Both are being well cared for—"

Twins. He said twins.

I made myself breathe. "Can I see them."

"You know that is not possible." He opened the folder and produced an envelope. "As per the agreement, five million. We have arranged a driver for two days from now, to give you time to rest before you travel."

I took the envelope. My hands were steady. That surprised me.

"When they are older," I said. "Can you tell them their mother loved them."

He looked at me for a moment with something almost human in his expression. "I will pass that along," he said quietly. He nodded once and left.

I moved to the window and watched his car disappear down the long driveway. Stood there until the sound of the engine was completely gone.

Then I went to find Rose.

She appeared from the kitchen, drying her hands, the relief on her face when she saw me upright completely genuine.

"Where is she," I said.

Rose's expression shifted into something soft and conspiratorial. "Old Mrs. Johnson down the road. I took her there before David arrived." She patted my arm. "Loud, healthy, and very opinionated about everything."

Something unknotted in my chest so completely I had to reach for the wall.

"Take me to her."

"Not looking like that you are not." She steered me firmly back toward the kitchen. "Shower. Food. Then we go. Non negotiable."

I have never showered and eaten so fast in my life.

We walked down the quiet road in the afternoon light, Rose beside me, and I kept thinking about what David had said. The twins are safe. Both are being well cared for. He had no idea there was a third. He had walked out of that house believing everything was accounted for, and somewhere in a room I had never seen, the father of my children was reading the contract and thinking the same thing.

He did not know about her.

And I had to make sure it stayed that way.

We heard her before we reached Mrs. Johnson's door, a small furious sound carrying all the way to the front step, and I was walking faster before I realized I was doing it.

Mrs. Johnson opened the door before Rose could knock, bright eyes and flour on her apron. "There is the mother," she said warmly. "She has been letting me know exactly how she feels about everything for the past two hours."

I went straight to the living room and there she was, in a little nest of cushions, face scrunched, fists clenched, absolutely furious at the world she had arrived in.

I picked her up.

She stopped crying immediately. Just like that. Like I was the answer to a question she had been asking.

"She knows you," Mrs. Johnson said from the doorway.

I stood there holding my daughter and cried quietly, and I did not try to stop it because some things deserve to be cried over properly.

The next two days were the closest thing to peace I had known in longer than I could remember. The three of us and the baby filling up Mrs. Johnson's warm house with noise and tea and conversation. My daughter slept and woke and looked at everything with enormous serious eyes as though she was already taking notes on everything she saw.

I tried not to think about the twins. I tried and mostly failed. Two babies I had carried for nine months were somewhere in the city with a man I had never properly seen, and I would never know how they turned out, and that was a grief I was going to be carrying for the rest of my life.

But I held what I had, and I was grateful for it.

The morning I was leaving I sat on the bed with my packed bags around me and listened to the house one last time.

A knock.

"Come in."

Rose stepped inside, already slightly emotional, doing her best not to show it. "The driver they sent has already gone. I told him someone else was coming for you."

"Good thinking."

We stood outside in the morning air, bags loaded, the cab idling at the end of the driveway. Seven months ago I had arrived here not knowing what I was walking into. I was leaving with a daughter nobody knew existed, an envelope of money, and something that felt, cautiously, like a future.

Rose was already crying. She would deny it later.

"I am going to miss you," I said.

"Me too," she said, opening her arms.

We held on for a long time. When we finally pulled apart she held my face in both hands and looked at me directly. "You are stronger than you know," she said. "Both of you."

I nodded because I did not trust my voice.

I got in. Waved through the window. Watched her standing at the end of the driveway getting smaller until the road curved and she was gone.

I sat back and looked at my daughter asleep against my chest.

Now what.

"Where to, ma'am?" the driver asked.

"The nearest train station," I said. There was no version of events in which I was going back to the Whitmore mansion. Whatever came next was going to be somewhere my father was not.

The station was busy in the mid morning way of stations everywhere, people moving with purpose in every direction. I had my bags and my daughter and my envelope and no plan beyond get on a train, and for the first time in a long time that felt like enough.

"Ashley."

I turned around.

The woman walking toward me was somewhere in her late fifties, dressed in the way of someone for whom expensive clothing had long since become unremarkable. She moved through the crowd with the ease of someone accustomed to being the most composed person in any room, and when her eyes found mine they were sharp and warm at the same time.

I knew that face. I had not seen it in years, and yet I knew it immediately, the way you know certain things that live in the bones rather than the memory.

"Aunt Clara," I said.

She smiled, still walking toward me, with the certainty of someone who had not ended up at this particular station by accident.

"Well," she said, her eyes dropping to the baby in my arms, then rising back to mine. "This is unexpected."

She reached out and touched my face, gently, where the fading mark of my father's hand still lived.

"Let us get you somewhere safe," she said. "And then you can tell me everything."

For the first time in as long as I could remember, I let someone else take the lead.

And as I followed her out of the station, my daughter pressed against my chest, I realized that Aunt Clara had not looked surprised to see me. She had not looked surprised to see the baby either.

She had looked like someone who had been expecting me.

And I had no idea what that meant.