“You were nine.”
“Being nine doesn’t change what I did.”
“It changes who was responsible. I hid the truth too.”
She stared at me in silence.
I told her about Sarah and about Clara’s questions years earlier.
“You hid a letter because you were scared,” I said. “I hid behind silence because I was proud. Only one of us was an adult.”
Aria covered her face.
“I ruined our family.”
“The adults around you made choices. You didn’t make them for us.”
She slowly lowered her hands.
“Did you really search?”
I opened my bag and spread out police reports, newspaper clippings, letters, and receipts from private investigators.
“I never stopped.”
Aria picked up one clipping before reaching for my hand.
Shaun refused to see me.
I didn’t push him.
Instead, I mailed him the silver watch.
My note read:
“It still loses four minutes a day. I kept winding it anyway.”
Three days later, he called.
“You really wound this every week?”
“Every Sunday.”
“Aria says you searched.”
“I did.”
“Then you weren’t very good at it.”
“No,” I said. “I wasn’t.”
He fell silent.
“I don’t know how to call you Dad.”
“Andrew will do until you’re ready.”
Just before ending the call, he asked,
“Did you ever have another family?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Because I already had one.”
PART 3
Near the end of her life, Clara came across a newspaper clipping about the memorial I held at the bridge every year.
When she realized I had never stopped searching, she recorded a message asking Gwen to help the children find me.
Aria later discovered the tape hidden among Clara’s belongings in a box Gwen had packed.
“Play it,” I said. “Peace built on a lie isn’t peace.”
