“I don’t know.”
When they asked whether she still loved them, he said:
“Of course she does.”
When Chloe waited by the front window on her seventh birthday because Elena had promised to call, he sat beside her until midnight.
“She probably got busy,” he said.
When the phone never rang, he made pancakes the next morning shaped like hearts.
“I’m sorry.”
Chloe smiled.
“No.”
She took his hand.
“It’s okay.”
Then she added:
“I look like me.”
He smiled.
“You do.”
Elena arrived twenty minutes before the ceremony.
She looked elegant.
Confident.
Expensive.
Julian was beside her.
Chloe had never met him.
That felt strange.
This was the man her mother had left them for.
He shook Chloe’s hand politely.
