He wiped his face.
“I have no excuse.”
For the first time, I saw that he was not going to offer a clever explanation or blame someone else.
He was simply a man who had made a terrible choice and spent years living with it.
I stood up.
“I came here because I needed to know whether you ever cared about her.”
He looked at me.
“I loved your mother. I was just too selfish and frightened to act like a man who deserved her.”
I left the café without forgiving him.
But as I walked toward my car, I felt something I had not expected.
Relief.
I had spent months believing that the missing pieces of my life would somehow change who I was.
They hadn’t.
I was still Claire.
I was the girl who loved rainy afternoons, hated black coffee, and laughed too loudly at terrible jokes.
I was the woman Evelyn had raised with patience and devotion.
