Chapter 2 - THE LIFE SHE BUILT
Anna did not stop walking until the ballroom doors closed behind her.
The cold night air struck her cheeks. Leo shifted in her arms, sleepy and confused.
“Mommy, why was that man looking at us?”
“Because he recognized me.”
“Is he a friend?”
Anna looked down at her son.
“No, sweetheart.”
“Is he bad?”
She thought about the runway. The smoke. The burning aircraft. The hand she had reached for and the empty space where Vincent should have been.
“He made a very bad choice.”
Leo considered that.
“Like when I took your cookie?”
A laugh escaped her before she could stop it.
“Something like that.”
Her friend and employer, Grace Miller, hurried out behind them. Grace had been waiting near the entrance while Anna attended the charity auction. She took one look at Anna's face and understood that something terrible had happened.
“Anna?”
“Can you get the car?”
“Of course.”
At home, Leo fell asleep before Anna finished changing him into pajamas. She tucked him into bed, kissed his forehead, and stood beside him longer than necessary.
Grace waited in the kitchen with two cups of tea.
“Was that Vincent Moretti?”
Anna nodded.
“The father?”
“Yes.”
“And he knows?”
“He saw Leo.”
Grace glanced toward the hallway.
“What are you going to do?”
“Nothing tonight.”
But Anna knew that was impossible.
Vincent Moretti had found her. The man she had spent three years trying to forget had looked directly at her son and recognized his own face.
“I was sure he would come back,” Anna said. “Even after the explosion, even when I couldn't breathe, I kept thinking he would find me.”
Grace said nothing.
“The flight attendant found me near the rear exit. She pulled me down the emergency stairs. I remember the heat. I remember falling. Then I woke up in a hospital with a broken shoulder, a concussion, and no identification.”
“You tried to contact him.”
Anna nodded.
“I called his office from the hospital. A woman answered. She said Mrs. Moretti had died, the funeral was private, and Vincent was not receiving calls.”
“Who answered?”
“I don't know. I called again a month later. Then I saw the photographs. Vincent and Sophia together. At the funeral reception. At a foundation event. She was wearing his mother's necklace.”
Anna's voice trembled.
“I thought he had chosen her. I thought he had mourned me for a little while and then gone back to the woman he had wanted all along.”
Grace reached across the table.
“You were raising a newborn. You were recovering from serious injuries. You did what you had to do.”
“I didn't want Leo growing up as a secret.”
“You didn't make him a secret. You protected him.”
Anna's phone vibrated.
An unknown number.
ANNA. PLEASE LET ME EXPLAIN. I KNOW I DON'T DESERVE IT. — VINCENT
She stared at it until the screen dimmed.
A second message arrived.
I WILL NOT APPROACH YOU WITHOUT YOUR PERMISSION. BUT PLEASE TELL ME WHETHER MY SON IS SAFE.
Anna typed three words.
May you like
HE IS SAFE.
Then she blocked the number.
