Part 2
I bent down and picked up the envelope before Rachel could reach it.
The paper was old, soft at the corners, creased from being handled too many times. My name sat across the front in Rachel’s handwriting, the loop of the E, the sharp slant of the W, the same handwriting that had once filled birthday cards, grocery lists, and little notes stuck to my refrigerator when she left before sunrise.
Evan Whitaker.
My fingers tightened around it.
Rachel stopped in the middle of the path.
Her shoulders rose as if she had forgotten how to breathe.
“Give that back,” she said.
Her voice was low, but it shook.
Noelle reached us a second later, breathless and confused. “Evan, what is going on?”
I ignored her.
Rachel’s eyes were fixed on the envelope like it was something alive, something dangerous. The triplets sat in the stroller, bundled in light jackets, all three watching us with open curiosity. The little girl with my gray eyes had a stuffed rabbit clutched to her chest.
“Rachel,” I said, “what is this?”
Her lips parted. For a second, the woman I had known flickered through the exhaustion—the woman who used to challenge me, laugh at me, love me with a fierceness that had terrified and saved me at the same time.
Then it vanished.
“It’s nothing,” she said.
“You ran from me.”
“I was startled.”
“You looked afraid.”
Her gaze darted toward Noelle.
That was when I finally turned and remembered the woman standing beside me. Noelle’s face had gone pale beneath her careful makeup. Her eyes moved from Rachel to the stroller, then to the envelope in my hand.
“Evan,” Noelle said softly, “please tell me who this is.”
Rachel gave a humorless laugh. “You never told her about me?”
Noelle stiffened.
I looked at Rachel. “You never gave me the chance to tell anyone anything.”
Pain flashed across her face so quickly I almost missed it.
“I gave you every chance,” she whispered.
The words hit me harder than they should have.
One of the children shifted in the stroller. The little girl with gray eyes lifted her rabbit and said, “Mommy, are we still getting pretzels?”
Rachel blinked, as if the sound of her daughter’s voice pulled her back into the world.
“In a minute, Lily,” she said.
Lily.
The name sank into me like a stone dropped into deep water.
I looked at her again, really looked this time. The gray eyes were mine, yes, but so was the stubborn line of her mouth, the small cleft in her chin, the way her eyebrows drew together when she was trying to understand something.
My chest felt too tight.
“Rachel,” I said, barely above a whisper, “are they mine?”
The park seemed to hold its breath.
Rachel looked away.
That was answer enough.
Noelle made a soft sound beside me, like someone had touched a match to her skin.
“No,” she said. “That’s not possible.”
Rachel’s eyes snapped back to her. “It was possible four years ago.”
I felt the ground shift beneath me.
Four years.
Triplets.
Rachel disappearing.
The letter.
That damned letter.
“You were pregnant?” I asked.
Her mouth trembled once before she pressed it flat. “I tried to tell you.”
“No, you didn’t.”
“Yes, Evan. I did.”
“No, Rachel. You left me a letter saying you were going to Boston with Daniel Pierce. You said you didn’t love me anymore. You said I was too late.”
Her face emptied.
“What?”
I stared at her.
She stared back.
For the first time since I had seen her by the pretzel cart, her fear gave way to something else.
Confusion.
Then horror.
“I never wrote that.”
I nearly laughed because there was nothing else for my body to do with the shock.
“What do you mean, you never wrote it?”