Evelyn closed her eyes.
“I didn’t say that,” she murmured.
“You didn’t have to,” Julian replied gently. “You believed it.”
I stared at her. “My mother told you I didn’t want the children?”
“She didn’t speak to me directly,” Evelyn said. “She sent the letter to my apartment after I left.”
“Do you still have it?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Because I burned it.”
Her voice was quiet, almost embarrassed.
“I was pregnant, alone, and barely sleeping. I had already spent months trying to reach you. When that letter came, I thought it confirmed everything I was afraid of.”
“What did it say?”
“That you wanted no connection to me. That your family would deny the children were yours. That if I tried to contact you, lawyers would become involved.”
I felt something inside me harden—not toward Evelyn, but toward the shape of the past.
“I never said any of that.”
