Chapter 8 - The Desperate Journey
Despite the legal bans, guilt and humiliation have a way of eating a man alive until he loses all sense of reality.
In September, ten months after the disastrous ultrasound that broke his dynasty, Julian Whitmore cashed his final tax refund check, bought a cheap economy ticket to London, and took an overnight coach to Edinburgh.
He did not know my exact address, but he remembered that my mother had often spoken of a village near the Forth Bridge. He spent four days wandering through the coastal towns of South Queensferry and Cramond, asking local shopkeepers if they had seen an American woman with two young children.
Most people ignored him. He looked disheveled, wearing an old trench coat that smelled of damp wool, his face thin, unshaven, and lined with premature wrinkles.
Finally, a baker’s assistant at a local tea shop mentioned that Mrs. Ashford visited the community market every Saturday morning with her children.
On Saturday, Julian stood across the cobblestone square in Queensferry, hiding behind the stone pillar of the clock tower.
The morning was bright and crisp. Gulls circled overhead, calling out over the blue waters of the Firth. And then, he saw us.
I was wearing a thick cream-colored sweater and dark green trousers, carrying a wicker basket filled with fresh apples and crusty bread. Beside me, Noah was holding a paper windmill, blowing on the plastic blades to make them spin, his face bright with unbothered joy. Lily was walking beside me, laughing as she balanced an orange on the palm of her hand.
Julian took a step forward, his breath catching in his throat.
They looked healthy. They looked radiant. In all the nine years he had known us, he had never heard me laugh with such open, unrestricted warmth. There were no pearls around my neck, no designer labels on my coat, but I looked like an empress surrounded by her court.
“Lily!” Julian called out, unable to stop himself.
His voice was hoarse, foreign, and desperate.
Lily stopped. Noah looked up.
Julian stepped out from the shadow of the clock tower, his arms half-outstretched, his eyes wild with tears.
“Lily... Noah... it’s Daddy,” he choked out, walking toward them across the cobblestones. “I came to find you. I’m so sorry... Daddy made a mistake, but I came to bring you home!”
Lily did not run to him. She did not cry.
Instead, she took two steps backward and wrapped her small arms protectively around Noah’s shoulders, pulling her little brother behind her back just as I stepped between them and the man approaching us.
I looked at Julian.
May you like
I did not feel hatred. I did not feel rage. I did not even feel the bitter sting of the betrayal that had cut me to pieces at that Christmas dinner table.
I felt nothing at all.
