On the back, my mother had written a short sentence.
Caleb isn’t like William.
I stared at those words until my vision blurred.
My mother had believed that.
Grandpa hadn’t.
And somewhere between those two truths stood the man who had abandoned me during my pregnancy.
Then another memory surfaced.
Months before I became pregnant, Caleb and I had been sitting together on his couch when he’d suddenly asked whether I’d owned a red bicycle as a child.
I’d laughed.
“Yes. My mom bought me one secondhand.”
Caleb had leaned his head back against the couch and smiled strangely at the ceiling.
At the time, I hadn’t understood why.
Now I did.
He had been checking whether I was the little girl he’d spent years remembering.
Even our first meeting wasn’t what I’d thought.
We hadn’t randomly met at that bookstore event.
