“Have you told him you don’t want him to go?”
“No.”
“Why?”
The answer came without hesitation.
“Pride.”
I almost laughed.
“You’re definitely related.”
He laughed too.
Then he reached into the drawer beside his chair.
“There’s something else.”
He handed me a photograph.
It showed Caroline Kane years earlier.
Beside her stood Daniel.
And beside Daniel stood me.
I stared.
It had been taken at a university design exhibition more than a decade ago.
I remembered the night.
Daniel and I had been dating six months.
A gracious woman had spent twenty minutes talking to me about my student portfolio.
I had never realized who she was.
“Your wife,” I whispered.
William nodded.
“She kept that photograph.”
“Why?”
“Because she wanted to offer you a fellowship.”
I looked up sharply.
“What?”
“She wrote your name on the back.”
My fingers trembled as I turned it over.
There it was.
**Julia Bennett — exceptional eye, brave work. Follow up.**
I could barely breathe.
“I never heard from her.”
“She became ill shortly afterward.”
My heart squeezed.
William continued.
“Daniel contacted her office months later to ask about the fellowship. By then she had stepped away.”
“So he knew Adrian’s family even before the foundation.”
“Yes.”
Another piece of the past shifted into place.
Not fate.
Not some elaborate plan.
A series of ordinary connections.
A city where talented people crossed paths.
A woman who had once seen promise in me.
A husband who remembered.
A son who became his friend years later.
William studied my face.
“I found that photograph while going through Caroline’s papers after my stroke.”
“Does Adrian know?”
“No.”
I looked toward the conservatory.
Through the glass doors, I could see Adrian kneeling beside Mia while she pointed at something growing in a large ceramic pot.
William followed my gaze.
Then he said quietly, “Perhaps you should ask him why he really bought Blackwell & Reed.”
My attention snapped back.
“What?”
“He has never told you?”
“Told me what?”
William leaned back.
And in his expression I saw the first hint of a truth Adrian had apparently kept hidden for years.
