“What did you know?”
Noelle’s expression shifted then. The innocence fell away, not completely, but enough for me to see the calculation beneath it.
“Evan,” she said, “your mother was trying to protect you.”
Rachel recoiled as if slapped.
“Protect me?” I asked.
“You were twenty-eight. You had just made partner. Your family had expectations. Rachel was unstable, emotional, completely wrong for—”
“For what?” I said. “For me? For my family? For the life my mother wanted?”
Noelle’s eyes shone. “You were drowning with her.”
“I loved her.”
The words came out before I could stop them.
Rachel looked at me.
Noelle did too.
The diamond on her finger flashed in the sun.
“You loved the idea of saving her,” Noelle said. “Your mother saw that. I saw that. We all saw it.”
Rachel’s face hardened. “You came to my home and threatened a pregnant woman.”
“I repeated what I was told.”
“By his mother?”
Noelle didn’t answer.
That was answer enough.
I felt anger then, real anger, hot and unfamiliar. Not the clean kind I could aim at a courtroom opponent. This was uglier, deeper. It had grief inside it.
“Did you know about the letters?” I asked.
Noelle looked away.
“Noelle.”
“I knew your mother had arranged for communication to stop.”
A sound left Rachel’s throat.
I stepped back from Noelle. “Communication?”
“She said it was better for everyone.”
I lifted the forged letter. “Did you know about this?”
“No.”
Again, too fast.
I looked at Rachel. “I need copies of everything. The letter, the returned envelope, anything else.”
Rachel pulled the stroller closer. “Why?”
“Because I’m going to find out who wrote them.”
Her eyes searched mine, looking for the lie, the trick, the delayed cruelty she had learned to expect from my name.
“And then what?” she asked.
I had no answer that was big enough.
Then what? I would cancel a wedding? Confront my mother? Demand a place in the lives of three children who had learned to live without me? Apologize for a wound I hadn’t made but had still left bleeding?
“I don’t know,” I admitted. “But I know I’m not walking away.”
Rachel flinched.
Not because the words hurt.
Because part of her wanted to believe them.
Noelle gave a brittle laugh. “This is insane. Evan, we are getting married in nine days.”
I turned to her.
“No,” I said. “We’re not.”
Her mouth opened.
Closed.
The color rose in her cheeks all at once. “You don’t mean that.”
“I do.”
“You’re emotional.”
“I’m awake.”
Noelle stared at me as if I had become a stranger in front of her.
Then her expression changed again.
For one brief moment, the polished woman disappeared, and something desperate looked out through her eyes.
“You don’t understand what you’re doing,” she said.
“I understand enough.”
“No, you don’t.” Her voice dropped. “Your mother didn’t start this.”
Rachel went still.
I stared at Noelle.
“What does that mean?”
Noelle’s throat moved. She looked toward the children, then away, as if even she had found a line she didn’t want to cross in front of them.
“Ask Rachel about the night before she disappeared,” she said.
Rachel’s eyebrows drew together. “What?”
Noelle gave her a strange, almost pitying look.
“Ask her why your mother was so easy to convince,” she said to me. “Ask her what your family was shown.”