“Camila,” he said quietly, “sometimes you don’t give people room to be themselves.”
“Don’t.”
“I kept quiet because it was easier than standing between you and the children.”
Liam wiped his face with his sleeve.
“You both made the house feel like a courtroom,” he said. “Mom judged. Dad settled. And Livia and I waited for the sentence.”
No one spoke after that.
Finally, I picked up Livia’s letter again.
“Where is she?”
Liam shook his head.
“Liam.”
“No. Not if you’re going there to drag her home.”
“I need to see my daughter.”
“Then don’t arrive like the reason she left.”
I hated him for saying it.
I loved him for saying it.
I sat on the floor beside the torn beanbag, surrounded by letters that told the truth better than I ever had.
“Tell me how not to scare her,” I whispered.
Liam’s face softened.
“Start by not making the first sentence about you.”
The next morning, he gave me the address.
John drove.
I held Livia’s letter the entire way.
Natalie opened the door before I could knock twice.
A curtain shifted in the house next door.
For once, I did not care who saw me humbled.
“Camila.”
“You knew.”
“Yes.”
Old anger rose fast.
“You had no right.”
Natalie stayed in the doorway.
“Your daughter was eighteen, pregnant, and crying on my porch. I had every reason to close the door because of you.”
Her eyes hardened.
“But she isn’t you. So I opened it.”
“You should have called me.”
“She begged me not to.”
“And you listened?”
“Yes,” Natalie said. “Because someone needed to.”
Mitchell appeared behind her with a baby bottle in his hand.
For eleven months, I had made him a villain.
He only looked tired.
“I asked her to call you,” he said.
“Then why didn’t you?”
“Because I married Livia,” he answered. “I don’t make choices for her.”
A baby cried inside the house.
Then Livia stepped into the hallway.
Her hair was shorter.
Her face was thinner.
But it was her.
My daughter.
Holding a baby wrapped in yellow.
“Livia,” I whispered.
