“Her husband.”
“That’s what the records say.”
The words landed more heavily than they should have. I had no right to be surprised. Three years had passed. I had walked away from Evelyn with my pride intact and my priorities unchanged. If she had rebuilt her life, I had no one to blame but myself.
Still, imagining another man standing in my kitchen, touching the same coffee mug, hearing the children cry in the middle of the night—
I closed my eyes.
“Do they have his name?”
“The children?”
“Yes.”
“Lily and Samuel Hart.”
Hart.
Not Moretti.
Not mine.
I looked down at the photograph again. Lily was wearing a yellow coat and a knitted hat with two pom-poms. Samuel sat beside her, holding a toy truck. Evelyn’s hand rested on the stroller handle.
She looked peaceful.
That hurt most of all.
Peace was something I had never been able to give her.
