The envelope looked harmless—just a thin white rectangle on the polished walnut desk—but Jacob Evans stared at it the way men stare at ticking bombs.

Outside the glass wall of his Boston office, late-afternoon sunlight bounced off skyscrapers and the American flag over City Hall snapped in the wind. Inside, the air hummed with the low throb of the AC and the muted buzz of his assistant’s phone.

He should have been thinking about quarterly numbers, the tech deal he was closing, the fact that at thirty he was already being profiled as one of the city’s “Young Business Leaders to Watch.”

Instead, Jacob could only hear the voice of the nurse from the private fertility clinic.

“Mr. Evans, the doctor asked me to give you this personally.”

She’d handed him the envelope with a careful, professional smile. He’d seen that look before—on people bearing bad news.

He tore the top open now, his fingers oddly clumsy. The letter inside was short. Clean black ink, the clinic’s logo, a few lines of clinical language that blew his world apart.

We have reviewed your family records. Your wife, Sandra Evans, has previously undergone two voluntary pregnancy terminations at our facility…

For a heartbeat, Jacob didn’t understand the words. They jumbled on the page—pregnancy, terminations, previously, two—and then lined up with brutal clarity.

Sandra had been pregnant.

Twice.

He heard his own voice in his head, years of him pleading, “Let’s see a specialist, Sandy. Maybe there’s something simple we’re missing.” Heard her lazy laugh, saw her perfectly manicured hand shooing him away.

“We’re fine, Jake. Kids will happen when they happen. Stop obsessing.”

Seven years of marriage. Seven years of whispered prayers when the pregnancy test showed a single line. Seven years of his heart sinking every time she rolled her eyes at the mention of children.

And she’d ended two pregnancies he hadn’t even known existed.

He shoved back his chair so hard it hit the shelf behind him. One of his framed awards rattled. His assistant peered through the glass, alarm flickering over his features. Jacob forced a tight smile and waved him away.

Then he grabbed his coat, his car keys, and the tiny, deadly letter, and walked out into the bright Boston day like a man heading into a storm.

Sandra was on the couch when he got home, curled up in buttery leather, scrolling through her phone. A reality show murmured on the big flat-screen. Shopping bags from Newbury Street boutiques were piled in a careless heap on the floor.

She looked up, surprised to see him this early.

“Jake? Did you forget we have dinner at Lucca tonight?” she asked, frowning when she saw his face.

He tossed the letter on the coffee table. It slid to a stop in front of her, the logo of the private clinic stark against the white.

“What’s this?” she asked.

“You tell me,” Jacob said. His voice sounded strange to his own ears, thin and sharp. “You know the place. You’ve been there. Twice.”

He watched the blood drain from her face as she recognized the letterhead. For a moment, her eyes darted—calculating, cornered. Then her jaw hardened.

“So they told you,” Sandra said flatly.

“They told me you’ve had two pregnancies,” Jacob said. The word scraped his throat. “And you chose to end them. Without telling me. While I spent seven years thinking something was wrong with me.”

She rolled her eyes, actually rolled them, like he’d accused her of forgetting to buy olives.

“Oh, please, Jacob. Don’t be so dramatic,” she snapped. “If you had your way, I’d already be some exhausted woman in yoga pants with a minivan and three screaming kids. I’d have a ruined body and zero time for myself. That’s not the life I want.”

“The life you want,” he repeated slowly. “What about the life we kept talking about? The one you nodded along to every time I said ‘when we have kids’? Was that just…decor?”

Sandra tossed her hair back, her designer earrings catching the light.

“I wanted security,” she said bluntly. “Stability. You. Not diapers and school runs and PTA meetings. We’re finally living the way I always dreamed—nice restaurants, nice vacations, your name in business magazines. Why would I blow that up just to be miserable and tired?”

He stared at her, the woman he’d married at twenty-three with his whole heart. For the first time, he saw her clearly: the way she treated waitstaff, the way she talked about other women who’d “let themselves go” after kids, the way she’d always found a way to turn his worries into inconveniences.

He realized, with a quiet, shattering certainty, that she was never going to change.

He pulled in a breath that felt like broken glass.

“Get out,” he said.

Her eyes widened. “Excuse me?”

“Take your bags, your salon appointments, your new boyfriend I’m sure you already have lined up,” Jacob said, his voice suddenly calm. “And get out of this house. You chose your freedom. Now you get it.”

“You can’t be serious,” she scoffed. “This is my life too. You think any divorce judge is going to punish me for doing what’s legal?”

He met her gaze without flinching.

“I think any judge is going to enjoy the show,” he said. “You enjoy drama so much, Sandra. Let’s give you some.”

They fought. Of course they did. Voices rose. Words were thrown like knives. At some point, she grabbed her keys and stormed out, slamming the front door hard enough to rattle the glass.

When the silence hit, it was almost deafening.

Jacob sank down in his study, the letter crumpled in his fist. On the wall, degree certificates from Boston University and glossy magazine covers with his face smiled down at him, smug and irrelevant.

This is it, he thought. I file for divorce, sell the house, and I’m finally done with this nightmare.

And then? Thirty years old, successful, alone. No children. No one to leave any of this to.

His mind drifted, uninvited, to another face. Almond-shaped eyes that used to light up whenever she saw him. A crooked smile that made him forget exam stress and overdue essays.

Evelyn Clark.

They’d met junior year in college. He was the driven business major with a five-year plan; she was the lit student who always had ink on her fingers and thought in metaphors. They’d stayed up all night studying, talking about everything from politics to their future kids’ names. He’d been sure he would marry her.

Then life, as it often does, had other plans.

The job offer in Boston had been too good to refuse. Her aging mother needed her in their hometown. They’d promised to try long distance. Call every night. Visit once a month.

Three months later, between missed flights and late meetings, the nightly calls trickled into weekly ones. Then monthly. Then nothing at all.

He met Sandra at a work function shortly after he moved. She was sharp, stunning, and completely fascinated by his potential. Jacob had mistaken that for love.

He looked up at the muted TV in his study, catching the tail end of a news anchor talking about something happening downtown. Boston, bustling and bright, went on with its life outside his window. Young families pushed strollers on the sidewalks. Teenagers skateboarded past Red Sox banners.

“I wonder what Evelyn’s doing right now,” he murmured to the empty room.

The thought stayed with him like an itch he couldn’t scratch. For days, between meetings and lawyers’ emails and Sandra’s increasingly dramatic texts, her face hovered at the edge of his vision.

One lonely evening in June, with a thunderstorm rolling over the Charles and the city lights smeared with rain, Jacob did something he hadn’t done in nearly a decade.

He typed Evelyn’s name into his phone.

Her social media profile confirmed what made his stomach drop: current city—Boston, Massachusetts.

She’d been here. All this time. Walking the same streets. Buying coffee at the same chains. Breathing the same chilly New England air.

He sat there for a full five minutes, thumb hovering over the call button, his heart pounding like he was twenty-one again and trying to ask her out for the first time.

Then he hit Call.

The phone rang once. Twice.

“Hello?” A familiar voice, older, notes of tiredness woven into the warmth, but still hers.

He nearly dropped the phone.

“Evelyn? It’s… it’s Jacob. Jacob Evans.”

Silence. Just long enough for him to think she’d hang up.

“Jacob?” she breathed. “Oh my God. I— Wow. It’s been… years.”

“Yeah.” He laughed, the sound shaky. “Surprise.”

They stumbled through the opening dance of catching up—how are you, where are you, what are you doing now. When he mentioned he lived in Boston, too, she actually laughed.

“You’re kidding,” she said. “All this time… I thought we were on opposite coasts or something. I moved here years ago. My ex—” She caught herself. “My ex-husband had work here.”

The word ex lodged in his mind like a hook.

“It’s… it’s hard to summarize a decade on the phone,” she added, a hint of vulnerability in her tone. “If you want, we could grab coffee sometime. Talk properly.”

He didn’t even try to sound cool.

“Yes,” Jacob said. “Please. There’s a café downtown—Brattle Street Café, near the Common. Tomorrow? Six?”

She hesitated for a fraction of a second. “Okay,” she said. “Tomorrow.”

The next evening, he got there early. The place smelled like espresso and cinnamon, the big windows looking out over a slice of bustling Boston sidewalk—students in college sweatshirts, tourists with cameras, someone walking a golden retriever in a Red Sox bandana.

He saw her before she saw him.

Evelyn stood near the back, twisting her paper coffee cup between her hands. Her hair was a little shorter, falling in waves just past her shoulders. There were a few fine lines at the corners of those almond-shaped eyes, but they only made them more beautiful. The sadness in them hit him like a punch.

When she turned and saw him, her lips parted in a small, shocked smile.

“Jake,” she said.

He crossed the room, suddenly unsure whether to hug her or shake her hand. She made the choice for him, stepping forward and wrapping him in a quick, tight hug that smelled like coffee and the shampoo she’d always used.

They sat. Ordered more coffee they didn’t need. Talked, at first, about neutral things: careers, mutual college friends, Boston winters.

Then the surface cracked.

He told her about Sandra, glossing over the worst of it, only mentioning that the marriage had ended and that there had been pain attached to children they never had. Evelyn’s eyes softened with sympathy.

She told him, haltingly, about Michael.

“We met right after college,” she said, tracing the rim of her mug. “He was charming. Confident. You know the type. He said he’d take care of everything if I moved with him. I thought… maybe that’s what stability looks like.”

“And was it?” Jacob asked quietly.

She laughed, but there was no humor in it.

“He was controlling,” she said. “It started small. Comments about my clothes. Who I spent time with. Then it was checking my phone, showing up at my work, criticizing everything I did. I kept telling myself it would get better after we got married. It didn’t. It just became… louder.”

She didn’t mention the bruises left by words. She didn’t have to. They were there in the way her shoulders hunched when she spoke his name.

“I finally filed for divorce,” she said. “It was messy. But I got out.”

“I’m glad you did,” Jacob said, his throat tight. “You didn’t deserve that.”

Evelyn looked away, blinking fast. He reached across the table, hesitated, then rested his hand over hers.

She didn’t pull away.

He couldn’t know—couldn’t possibly guess—that there was a part of her story she hadn’t let herself speak aloud in years. The part where a hospital room, a newborn’s cry, and a broken promise had shattered something inside her that never healed.

Six years ago, she had gone into labor early.

Her pregnancy had been, up until then, smooth. Checkups. Ultrasounds. She’d fallen in love with the grainy, dancing shape on the screen, imagined tiny fingers wrapped around hers. She’d bought little socks and washed tiny onesies in fragrance-free detergent.

Michael had complained about how “huge” she was getting. About stretch marks. About how “this better be worth it.” His words had twisted into her, adding stress she didn’t need.

One night, after another fight over her swollen ankles and unwashed dishes, the pain had started. Too soon. Too sharp.

The hospital lights had been bright. The nurses’ hands quick. Monitors beeped. Someone said the baby was in distress. Someone else mentioned blood loss. Then it blurred.

They’d saved her. They’d told her, when she surfaced through waves of medication, that they had tried to save the baby too, but…

“I’m so sorry,” the doctor had said. “Your daughter didn’t make it. She was born too early.”

Grief was a physical thing. It tore through her, left her curled around an empty ache. She had held for a moment a tiny body, taken in the sight through a haze—the little fist, the ears pressed close to the head, the hand that didn’t quite open. She’d loved every inch.

Then they’d taken the baby away.

She had never questioned their words. She’d had no reason to think the doctor was lying. No reason to imagine that somewhere, in an office down the hall, Michael was signing papers he had no right to sign and sliding thick envelopes across a desk.

I can’t raise a child with abnormalities, he’d hissed to himself earlier, fists clenched, heart full of shame he tried to cover with outrage. I didn’t sign up for this.

Money had changed hands. Lines had been forged. Boxes checked. The baby—his baby—listed for placement, labeled “special needs,” while her mother lay in a hospital bed, sedated and heartbroken.

Evelyn had walked out of that hospital days later believing she was leaving alone.

She carried that emptiness into her marriage, into her divorce, into her new life in Boston. She packed away the tiny socks. She never stepped foot in the pediatric aisle again. She didn’t tell Jacob any of that over coffee. Some wounds still oozed when you poked them, no matter how much time had passed.

What she did do was listen when he told her, earnest and open, that he had never stopped thinking about her. That seeing her again felt like a door he’d slammed years ago had creaked open unexpectedly.

“Maybe we were stupid kids back then,” he said with a small smile. “Maybe we’re stupid adults now. But I… I’d like to see where this goes. If you want.”

Evelyn’s answer was soft but steady. “I want.”

Days turned into weeks, and the weeks slid into months. They fell into a new pattern—Saturday morning coffee runs, late-night phone calls, shared jokes about Boston drivers and the Red Sox, dinners in little neighborhood restaurants instead of the flashy spots Sandra had preferred.

Jacob showered her with a kind of care she’d never experienced before. He showed up when he said he would. He remembered the names of her coworkers. He fixed a squeaky hinge on her apartment door without making a big deal of it.

One crisp October afternoon, with the leaves in Boston Common turning gold and the sky that particular bright, washed blue New England does so well, they walked hand in hand around a small pond near Evelyn’s place.

Children fed ducks at the water’s edge. Joggers jogged past in hoodies. Somewhere, someone played guitar softly.

“Want to feed them?” Jacob asked, nodding at the ducks.

“With what?” Evelyn asked, laughing.

He pulled a small bag of fresh bread from his jacket pocket with a flourish.

“Prepared,” he said.

“You’re ridiculous,” she said, but her eyes were shining.

They stood near the water, breaking off pieces of bread and tossing them to the ducks, who quacked and jostled and flapped their wings. Jacob was intent on making sure no duck was left out, throwing little bits to the smaller ones at the back.

He was just about to throw another piece when he felt a small tug at his jacket sleeve.

“Mister,” a high, clear voice said. “Can I have a tiny piece too?”

He turned.

A little girl of about six stood there, wearing a faded pink coat and scuffed sneakers. Her hair was pulled back in a crooked ponytail. Her big eyes were fixed on the bread in his hand with naked longing.

“Of course,” Jacob said gently. “Here.”

He held out a piece. She took it quickly, clutching it with her right hand. Her left stayed jammed deep in her coat pocket.

“Thank you,” she said, biting into the bread like she hadn’t eaten in hours.

Evelyn knelt down to the girl’s eye level, her heart squeezing.

“What’s your name, sweetheart?” she asked.

“Mary,” the girl said around a mouthful.

“Where are your parents, Mary?” Jacob asked, glancing around.

“I don’t got parents,” she said matter-of-factly. “I live in the big gray building with the other kids.” She pointed vaguely toward the edge of the park, where an old brick orphanage sat half-hidden behind trees and a chain-link fence. “My caregiver said I could come here but not to go too far.”

Evelyn’s chest ached. “Why do you keep your hand in your pocket?” she asked softly. “Does it hurt?”

Mary shook her head. “No, ma’am,” she said. “It’s just funny-looking. My caregiver says it was like that since I was a baby. My ears too. I don’t mind, but the other kids make fun of me sometimes. So I hide it.”

Very slowly, as if bracing for them to flinch away, she pulled her left hand out of her pocket.

The little palm was bent, the fingers curled into a tight bundle that didn’t quite straighten. As Mary reached up to tuck a piece of hair behind her ear, Evelyn saw how the ear lay pressed close to her head, its edge folded differently.

The world narrowed to that tiny hand and that small ear.

For a split second, Evelyn was back in a hospital room with fluorescent lights, looking down at a newborn whose left palm was curled, whose ears were pressed tight to her head, whose little fingers she had counted one by one.

Her vision tunneled. A roaring filled her ears. Her heart thudded once, twice—and then the world went black.

“Evelyn!” Jacob shouted as she crumpled sideways.

He caught her before she hit the ground, lowering her carefully onto the damp grass.

“Ma’am? Ma’am?” Mary hovered, clutching her piece of bread, eyes wide with fear.

“Hey, hey, it’s okay,” Jacob said, forcing his voice to stay calm. Evelyn’s face was pale, her lashes dark against her cheeks. He patted her cheek lightly. “Evie, come on. Wake up. You’re scaring us.”

For one frozen second, he considered calling 911. Then she sucked in a sharp breath, her eyes flying open.

She stared at the sky, disoriented, then at Jacob’s worried face, and then her gaze snagged on Mary.

On the small crooked hand. On the ears.

Tears flooded her eyes so fast she barely had time to blink them away. She sat up, sobbing so hard her shoulders shook.

“I— I’m sorry,” Jacob stammered, completely lost. “What happened? Do you feel sick? Dizzy?”

Evelyn shook her head, pressing a trembling hand to her mouth. It took minutes—long, hiccuping, raw minutes—before she could speak.

“Can you… can you give us a second?” she whispered to Jacob.

He nodded, ushering Mary to a nearby bench where he sat her down and handed her another piece of bread.

“Evelyn’s just a bit overwhelmed,” he said. “Sometimes grown-ups get big feelings too. We’ll be right here, okay?”

Mary nodded solemnly.

When he turned back, Evelyn was standing, unsteady but upright. She walked over to the little girl as if drawn by something magnetic and dropped to her knees in front of her.

She cupped Mary’s face in her hands, taking in every detail—the curve of her cheekbones, the shape of her eyes, the little crease in her chin.

“I always knew you’d find me, Mommy,” Mary whispered suddenly, like someone stating a fact. “No one believed me when I said you would, but I felt it.”

Jacob’s heart stopped.

Evelyn let out a choked sound, half laugh, half sob, and pulled the girl into her arms. Mary’s small body fit against her like it had always been meant to be there.

For a while, there were no words. Just the sound of Evelyn crying into Mary’s hair and the ducks quacking irritably at being ignored.

When she finally spoke, Evelyn told them everything.

She told Jacob and Mary about the pregnancy. About the hospital. About the doctor’s solemn face telling her the baby hadn’t made it. About the tiny, curly hand she’d held for less than a minute before they’d taken the body away.

“I thought she died,” Evelyn sobbed. “I mourned her. I went to therapy. I lit candles every year on her birthday. I had nightmares. I blamed myself. I had no idea…”

Jacob listened, tears burning in his own eyes. The girl in his arms—because he’d somehow wrapped them both in a ridiculous, awkward group hug—sniffled, understanding only pieces but clinging tighter to the woman she instinctively trusted.

“How did she get to the orphanage?” Jacob asked hoarsely when Evelyn’s story tumbled to an exhausted pause.

There was only one answer that made any sick sense.

Michael.

The name landed like a stone.

“He must have…” Evelyn began, then stopped, horror blooming across her face. “He must have paid someone. Signed something. They told me she was gone, but really, they gave her away. Like she was a problem to be solved.”

Rage flared in Jacob’s chest, hot and white.

“He doesn’t get to keep that secret,” he said. “Not anymore.”

What followed was not easy, or quick, or clean.

First, they walked Mary back to the orphanage. The building’s paint was chipped, but the staff were doing what they could with too few hands and too little funding. Mary’s caregiver, a tired-looking woman with kind eyes, nearly had a heart attack when she saw the three of them walk in together.

“You ran off again,” she scolded gently, but her gaze flicked warily to Jacob and Evelyn. “And who are you?”

Evelyn stepped forward, still shaky but resolute.

“My name is Evelyn Clark,” she said. “Six years ago, I was told my premature baby girl died shortly after birth. Today, I think I found her by a pond. Her name is Mary. And she has my face.”

Lawyers were called. Records were requested. Jacob, who knew his way around contracts and negotiations better than most, turned his skills toward the one thing that mattered now: getting Mary home.

They pulled medical files from the hospital, an orphanage intake form signed with a version of Evelyn’s signature that she swore, under oath, was not hers. The dates lined up too neatly to be coincidence. DNA tests confirmed what their hearts already knew.

Mary was Evelyn’s daughter.

Michael, when confronted, sputtered and denied and then went very quiet when the possibility of charges was mentioned. In the end, he signed the paperwork terminating whatever rights he might have tried to claim.

“I was scared,” he muttered once, when cornered by a lawyer in a conference room. “I thought people would pity us. Judge us. I didn’t want a child who—”

“Don’t finish that sentence,” Jacob said, stepping between him and Evelyn. “You gave up the right to an opinion the day you chose your pride over your child’s life.”

The legal system, slow and grinding as it could be, moved faster when pressed by a man like Jacob, who had resources and connections and a ferocious determination. Social workers, softened by Mary’s big eyes and resilient smile, were on their side.

Within months—not years, like they’d feared—Evelyn’s parental rights were restored. Mary’s last name changed. Her room at the orphanage was emptied.

She moved into a small, light-filled apartment with pale yellow walls and a bed piled high with new blankets. She taped drawings to the fridge and left crayons on every flat surface.

She took to calling Jacob “Jake” at first, then “Jake-dad” when she thought he wasn’t listening. Eventually, on a sleepy Sunday morning when they were all piled on the couch watching cartoons, she yawned and said, without thinking, “Dad, can you pass the cereal?”

Jacob had never handed a cereal box over more carefully in his life.

Later, when she’d gone to brush her teeth, he found Evelyn in the kitchen, pressed against the counter, crying quietly.

“Hey,” he murmured, wrapping his arms around her from behind. “Good tears or bad tears?”

“A little of both,” she admitted, leaning back into him. “I thought I’d never hear anyone call me ‘Mom.’ Now I get it a hundred times a day. And I love it. And I’m terrified. And I love it.”

Mary’s hand, of course, became a subject of practical concern rather than whispered shame. Jacob took Evelyn to a highly regarded clinic just outside Boston that specialized in pediatric reconstructive surgery.

He sat beside them in a bright waiting room with posters of cartoon bones on the walls while a surgeon with kind eyes reviewed Mary’s X-rays.

“We can improve function,” the doctor said, tapping the image. “Her hand will never be exactly like the other one, but with surgery and therapy, she should be able to use it much more easily. As for her ears, that’s a more cosmetic procedure, but we can absolutely discuss it when she’s older, if that’s something she wants. The important thing is that she’s healthy.”

Mary sat on the exam bed, swinging her legs, unconcerned.

“I like my ears,” she said. “They make me look like a fairy in a story.”

Evelyn kissed her forehead. “Then you keep them exactly how you like them,” she said.

The surgery for her hand, when they decided to go ahead months later, was nerve-wracking. Jacob paced hospital corridors while Evelyn sat, hands clasped, lips moving silently.

Everything went well. The recovery was slow but steady. Mary’s determination made up for what her tiny muscles lacked.

“There,” she said proudly one day, managing to grasp a crayon between thumb and forefinger. “See? I can draw with both hands now.”

As months rolled into a year, the scars—on their bodies and their hearts—began to fade. Not disappear, not entirely; some pain is stitched into you forever. But soften into something livable.

On a mild spring afternoon, under a tree in the Boston Public Garden, Jacob knelt on slightly damp grass and held out a small velvet box.

Mary, who had been chasing pigeons, stopped and squealed.

“Are you doing the thing?” she whispered loudly.

“Yeah, kiddo,” he said, his eyes never leaving Evelyn’s. “I’m doing the thing.”

He opened the box. The ring inside was simple but elegant, a single diamond catching the filtered sunlight.

“Evelyn Clark,” he said, his voice steady, “I have loved you since we were stupid college kids eating bad pizza on the floor. I loved you when I was too proud to call and say I missed you. I loved you when life knocked us both down and we got back up with scars. I love you now, with your daughter’s art all over my fridge and your shoes in my hallway. Will you marry me? Will you let me officially be the guy who fixes leaky sinks and makes pancakes and gets called ‘Dad’ in your house?”

Tears filled her eyes, blurring the ring, his face, the skyline beyond.

“Yes,” she whispered, then louder. “Yes, Jacob. Yes.”

Mary tackled them both in a hug so enthusiastic they nearly toppled over.

“Can I be the flower girl?” she demanded.

“You’re the reason the flowers bloom, kid,” Jacob laughed, kissing the top of her head.

They didn’t have a grand cathedral wedding or a destination ceremony. They chose a small chapel in the city, white wooden pews and simple flowers. Evelyn walked down the aisle on her own two feet, her head high, her hand resting lightly on Mary’s shoulder as the little girl walked ahead scattering petals.

When the minister asked if anyone had any reason these two shouldn’t be joined, Jacob felt a brief, irrational flash of anxiety that someone—Sandra, Michael, the universe—would stand up and object.

No one did.

They said their vows. They exchanged rings. When the minister pronounced them husband and wife, Mary clapped so hard her petals flew everywhere.

Later that night, when the guests had gone and the dishes were stacked in the sink, the three of them sat on the living room floor, tired and full and quietly happy.

“Hey,” Jacob said, nudging Mary with his shoulder. “You know how some people talk about ‘happily ever after’ like it’s just a thing that happens?”

She nodded, eyes drooping.

“It’s not,” he said. “It’s a million little choices. It’s showing up. It’s apologizing when you yell. It’s saving part of your paycheck for college and part for vacations. It’s making sure the people you love know they are wanted, every single day.”

Mary considered this, in the solemn way only a child who has seen too much can.

“I think we’re good at that,” she said. “At the wanting part.”

Evelyn reached over and laced her fingers—both of them—through hers.

“We’re learning,” she said.

Jacob looked at them—at the woman he had almost lost forever, at the child who had been taken and then returned by a twist of fate at a duck pond in an American park—and felt something settle in his chest that had been restless for years.

He had spent most of his life believing success would fix him. That enough money, enough trophies, enough features in glossy magazines would make the emptiness go away.

But in the end, his life hadn’t turned on a merger or a stock price.

It had turned on a windy afternoon, a piece of bread, a small hand tugging at his sleeve, and a little girl’s simple, world-shattering request:

“Mister, may I have a tiny bit too?”

He’d given her bread that day.

Now, every day, he gave her something more.