For eight years, we had each believed the other one walked away first.
Claire had raised the boy she called Owen. Eventually her job brought her back to the area, and Owen had ended up placed at the same school as Ethan — a coincidence Derek had apparently tried hard to prevent, pushing her toward other school districts. She’d refused. She was done rearranging her son’s whole life around a story she’d stopped fully trusting a long time ago.
“I called you for months, Claire,” I said. “Months.”
“I know you did.”
“Then why didn’t you ever pick up?”
“Because Derek told me answering would only make things worse for you.”
She reached into her bag and pulled out a folded, yellowed piece of paper. My name sat at the bottom of it in handwriting that looked almost like mine — almost, but not quite. The phrasing wasn’t anything I would have written, not in a hundred years. And one detail made my blood run completely cold: the letter addressed Claire using an old childhood nickname, one only Derek ever used, always specifically to needle her.
