I looked at the water, at the city, at the family I had nearly lost before I knew it existed.
Evelyn glanced at me. “What are you thinking?”
“That I should have come here years ago.”
“You weren’t ready.”
“No,” I said. “But I was loved.”
She looked ahead.
“Yes,” she said softly. “You were.”
Lily tugged my hand. “Dad Adrian, look.”
She pointed to the river, where sunlight flashed across the surface like scattered glass.
I knelt beside her.
“It’s beautiful,” I said.
She leaned against my shoulder.
For a moment, I thought about the man I had been—the man who believed providing was the same as loving, that silence was protection, that a family could be secured through control.
Then I looked at Samuel laughing beside Julian and Evelyn walking beside us, no longer waiting for me to become someone worthy of her.
I understood that a second chance was not a door someone opened for you.
