He used to run behind me while I learned how to ride it.”
Grandpa nodded slowly.
“That was Caleb.”
Everything inside me shifted.
The bookstore where Caleb and I met two years earlier.
The way he had looked at me.
The strange familiarity in his expression.
The questions he sometimes asked about my childhood.
None of it had been coincidence.
He had known who I was from the beginning.
I looked at Grandpa.
“What happened between Mom and William?”
Grandpa’s face hardened.
“After Caleb’s mother died, William became interested in your mother.”
He paused carefully.
“Sarah rejected him.”
“And?”
“He didn’t accept rejection well.”
Grandpa’s jaw tightened.
“He fired her. Then he used his money and connections to make sure other families nearby wouldn’t hire her either.”
A forgotten memory suddenly returned.
A man shouting.
My mother gripping my hand.
A doorway.
“She was scared,” I whispered.
Grandpa nodded.
“I
