Chapter 13 - THE WOMAN VINCENT NEVER STOPPED LOVING
Vincent asked me to dinner in January.
“A real dinner,” he said.
“What have the others been?”
“Negotiations with food.”
I laughed.
That was dangerous.
For months, we had focused on Noah.
Ethan.
Lawyers.
Investigations.
The past.
This was the first time Vincent asked for something that belonged only to us.
“I’m not twenty-nine anymore,” I told him.
“Good.”
“Why?”
“I was terrible at being married at thirty-three.”
“You were.”
“I’m hoping age improved me.”
“The jury is still out.”
He took me to a small Italian restaurant in Boston.
No guards at our table.
No private room.
No display.
We talked.
Not about Sophia for the first hour.
That felt revolutionary.
He asked about the years he missed.
My work.
Noah’s childhood.
Daniel.
I asked about Ethan.
Vincent told me about teaching him to ride a bicycle, attending school plays, and sitting beside him all night when he had pneumonia at seven.
I realized something painful and beautiful.
The man who had failed me had still been capable of being a good father.
Just not to the son he didn’t know existed.
“I used to hate Ethan,” I admitted.
Vincent looked surprised.
“Not him personally.”
“I understand.”
“I hated what he represented.”
“And now?”
“I think he’s a good kid.”
“He is.”
We walked beside the Charles River afterward.
Vincent stopped beneath a streetlamp.
“I still love you.”
There it was.
Eighteen years late.
Or maybe eighteen years continuous.
I looked at him.
“I don’t know what I feel.”
“That’s okay.”
“You’re not going to make some terrifying Moretti declaration?”
“I had one prepared.”
I laughed.
“What was it?”
“Something about waiting another eighteen years.”
“Too dramatic.”
“I thought so.”
He became serious.
“Claire, I don’t want the woman I married back.”
That surprised me.
“She was twenty-nine, heartbroken, and too willing to disappear rather than demand answers.”
He touched his chest.
“And the man she married was too proud to chase truth when silence was easier.”
His voice softened.
“I want to know the people we are now.”
So we started there.
Coffee.
Walks.
Phone calls.
No promises.
Then, three months later, Vincent received the final report from the Moretti audit.
One account had been created eighteen years earlier.
He didn’t recognize it.
Neither did Sophia.
The founder was Vittorio Moretti, Vincent’s late father.
The beneficiary line contained two names.
CLAIRE MORETTI.
ANY BIOLOGICAL CHILD OF CLAIRE AND VINCENT.
May you like
Vincent’s father had known I was pregnant.
And unlike his son, he had apparently tried to prepare for Noah’s existence.
