She nodded without arguing.

Jonah had remained near the railing throughout our conversation. When he finally spoke, his voice was quiet.

“She’s leaving something out, Luke.”

Hannah looked up sharply.

“Jonah, please.”

“He deserves to know.”

I turned toward him.

“Then tell me.”

He explained that Hannah had found our family’s memorial announcement online several months after the accident. Later, she began watching the photographs and videos my sister posted of Daisy growing up.

I remembered those posts. My sister had shared pictures of Daisy taking her first steps, learning to feed herself, and blowing out the candle on her first birthday cake. At the time, I was grateful that someone had the energy to preserve those moments.

I never imagined Hannah was watching them from a few hundred miles away.

“You saw her first birthday?” I asked.

Hannah nodded.

“And her second?”

Another nod.

I pressed my hands against the table.

“I sat beside an empty chair at both those parties because I couldn’t bear to put anyone else in your place. And you were watching?”

“Yes.”

“Did you ever think about what would happen when she got old enough to ask questions?”

“Every day.”

“Then you should’ve answered them.”

Hannah began crying again, but I couldn’t comfort her. There had been so many nights when Daisy had asked for her mother that I’d lost count.

The first time she’d said Mama, she’d been pointing at Hannah’s photograph on the dresser. I had picked her up, kissed her cheek, and told her about the woman in the picture.

By the time she was two, she understood that Mommy wasn’t coming home.

I had never imagined that statement might be untrue.

“I want to know something,” I said, turning to Jonah. “What exactly were you doing all those years?”

He pulled out a chair but didn’t sit.

“Helping her get through rehabilitation. Taking her to appointments. Making sure she had somewhere to stay.”

“And holding her hand in public?”

Hannah looked startled.

“Luke, it isn’t what you think.”

“I walked into a bakery and saw my supposedly dead wife holding hands with the man who took my business. Tell me what I’m supposed to think.”

Jonah lowered his head.

“My wife died six years ago. She had leukemia, and near the end, she didn’t want our son seeing her in the hospital. She was terrified he’d remember her that way.”

He paused before continuing.

“When Hannah started having panic episodes, I recognized that fear. Sometimes she needed something to hold onto until she could settle herself. That’s what you saw downstairs.”

I looked at Hannah. She was gripping the edge of her chair with the same trembling hand I’d noticed earlier.

The explanation changed what I’d seen at the bakery, but it didn’t make Jonah innocent.

“You still took my clients,” I told him.

“I did.”

“You knew I’d just lost my wife. I had a newborn daughter at home.”

“I know.”

“Then why?”

He rubbed his forehead.

“Because I wanted the firm, Luke. We’d been arguing about its direction for months, and when everything happened, I saw an opportunity. I told myself the clients needed someone who could handle the work.”

“You told yourself whatever made it easier to sleep.”

“You’re right.”

For the first time that morning, Jonah looked genuinely ashamed.

“I should’ve told you Hannah was alive the moment I found out. And I should never have taken advantage of what happened to your family.”

I waited for him to offer some grand excuse. He didn’t.

“I can’t undo either decision,” he said. “But I won’t pretend I was protecting you.”

That mattered more than I wanted to admit.

Jonah eventually excused himself, leaving Hannah and me alone on the terrace. I could hear dishes being stacked downstairs and people talking about lunch plans, completely unaware that my entire understanding of the last three years had changed.

Hannah looked toward the diaper bag.

“Is that Daisy’s duck?”

I followed her gaze.

The little yellow toy had been part of our family longer than Daisy had. Hannah had knitted it during the final weeks of her pregnancy, sitting at our kitchen table with a basket of yarn beside her.

She’d never been particularly good at knitting. One wing was longer than the other, and she’d sewn the button eyes on slightly crooked.

I used to tease her about it.

“You remember making it?” I asked.

“I remember you saying it looked more like a confused chicken.”

Despite everything, I almost smiled.

“It did.”

“I was going to fix the wing before she was born.”

I took the duck from the bag and placed it on the table.

Its yellow yarn had faded from years of washing. One button had been replaced, and the crooked wing was still crooked.

Hannah reached toward it, then stopped.

“May I?”

I hesitated before nodding.

She picked it up carefully, running her thumb over the uneven stitches. Her face changed in a way I hadn’t seen since the day Daisy was born.

“Does she still sleep with it?”

“Every night.”

Hannah held the toy against her chest.

“I missed everything.”

“Yes,” I said. “You did.”

She closed her eyes.

I wasn’t trying to hurt her. I simply couldn’t give her the comforting answer she seemed to need. Daisy’s childhood hadn’t waited for Hannah to find her courage.

We spent another hour talking. I told her about Daisy’s first words, her favorite foods, and the little purple rain boots she insisted on wearing even when the sun was shining.

Hannah found a pencil in her handbag and began writing everything on a paper napkin.

“She doesn’t like water on her sleeves,” I told her. “She’ll change her shirt three times if she gets wet.”

Hannah wrote it down.

“And she’s afraid of elevators. I don’t know why. She just doesn’t like the doors.”

She added that too.

Watching my wife take notes about our daughter was one of the saddest things I’d ever witnessed. She was trying to learn a little girl who should never have been a stranger to her.

Eventually, she put down the pencil.

“Luke, can I see her?”

I looked at the birthday present sitting between us.

“Not today.”

Her face fell, but she nodded.

“I understand.”

“I don’t know what happens next, Hannah. I don’t know what this means for us, and I won’t pretend I do. But Daisy is three years old. She can’t understand any of this, and I’m not going to let her get attached to you just to lose you again.”