I stepped into the hallway.
My fiancé stood by the stained-glass windows, nervous for the first time since I’d known him.
“You lied to me.”
“Not about loving you.”
“Then why hide your real name?”
“Because I knew this would happen when your father heard it.”
His voice lowered.
“My mother spent years trying to understand why her life fell apart. Before she died, she talked about your father constantly.”
“Claire is dead?”
He nodded.
“You lied to me.”
“My mother believed Daniel abandoned her,” Julian said. “She blamed him until the day she died.”
“So you found me because of him?”
“At first, yes. I wanted answers. But then I fell in love with you.”
“You expect me to believe that?”
“I know how it sounds. But I never planned for this to happen today.”
“So you found me because of him?”
I searched his face for something safe.
Instead, I saw grief.
“Did you ever intend to tell me?”
“Yes. I kept waiting for the right time.”
I laughed bitterly. “We were five minutes away from getting married.”
Julian lowered his voice.
“Your father isn’t innocent. My mother wrote to him years later, but he never answered.”
“That’s impossible.”
“Then ask him.”
We returned to the office.
“Did you ever intend to tell me?”
“Did Claire write to you?” I asked Dad.
“Yes.”
Anger hit me.
“You told me she chose that life.”
“That’s what I believed,” he said. “But by then, I’d married your mother. You were a baby. I thought reopening the past would destroy everyone.”
