“You should have arranged that through my attorney.”
“I didn’t come as your opponent. I came as the father of my children.”
I folded my arms. “Interesting. You weren’t particularly interested in them when you said taking them would be ‘less hassle.’”
He flinched. Good.
“I was angry,” he said.
“No. You were honest.”
Dark rain clouds gathered overhead, thick and low. The English air sharpened every sound around us.
“Please,” he said quietly. “I know I was terrible. I know I don’t deserve much from you. But I want to see them.”
“That depends on why.”
His eyes flashed. “Because they’re my kids, Catherine.”
I held his gaze. “Then start acting like it.”
The silence stretched between us.
Finally, he said the one thing I had waited too long to hear and no longer needed.
“I’m sorry.”
Not dramatic. Not eloquent. Just tired and stripped bare.
I believed he meant it.
I also knew it changed nothing.
“You weren’t sorry when you lied,” I said quietly. “You weren’t sorry when you hid money. You weren’t sorry when your family humiliated me. You only became sorry once consequences arrived.”
His face tightened. “That’s not fair.”
“There’s that word again.”
He exhaled sharply and looked toward the trees. “Everything is collapsing.”
I said nothing.
“My mother won’t stop crying. Megan barely speaks to me unless it’s about legal documents. Allison…” He stopped there, jaw tightening. “Allison’s gone.”
“Do you know whose baby it was?”
He let out a humorless laugh. “She says she’s not sure.”
I should have felt vindicated. Instead, I just felt exhausted.
“What do you want from me, David?”
He looked at me then, and for the first time in years, he looked like a man standing in front of truth instead of running around it.
“I want one chance not to fail my children completely.”
That was the first honest thing he had said.
So I made a decision.
Not for him.
For Aiden and Chloe.
“You may see them,” I said. “Today. One hour. In the garden. With me and Nick present.”
Relief flooded his face so suddenly it almost resembled grief. “Thank you.”
“Don’t thank me. Use the time well.”
When I brought the children outside, their reactions broke my heart in opposite ways.
Chloe ran first.
“Daddy!”
David dropped to his knees and caught her, squeezing his eyes shut as though he had forgotten what forgiveness felt like. Aiden walked more slowly, somehow older now, measuring the distance with caution no child should have to carry.
David opened one arm toward him. “Hey, buddy.”
After a moment, Aiden stepped forward and allowed his father to hug him. But over David’s shoulder, his eyes found mine, and I saw the question there.
Can I trust him?
