Chapter 3 - The Voice Below Our Balcony
The next day, I tried to give Owen the vacation I'd promised him. We walked the waterfront, ate lunch outside, spent an afternoon at the aquarium. The whole time, some small, stubborn part of me kept insisting I needed proof before I did anything I couldn't take back.
Maybe there was an explanation. Maybe he'd lost his memory. Maybe he'd been hurt, or hiding from someone dangerous. The mind gets generous with excuses when the heart is desperate not to face the obvious one.
That evening, while Owen watched cartoons inside, I stood alone on our balcony. That's when I heard a voice drift up from below — a voice I would have known anywhere.
"Paige, I already told you I'm not spending another thousand dollars because you woke up hating the earrings you bought yesterday."
Every muscle in my body locked in place. I leaned over the railing.
One floor down, Nathaniel stood on another balcony with the blonde woman from the plane. Her arms were crossed tight.
"You promised Savannah was going to be romantic."
"It is romantic."
"Not when you're complaining about every single dollar we spend."
He sighed — that exact sigh, the one I would have recognized in a crowd of a thousand people. Then he said something that erased whatever doubt I had left.
"One of these days you're going to figure out that being pretty doesn't fix everything, Paige."
My fingers went white around the railing.
He'd said almost that exact sentence to me once. After Owen was born, when I'd mentioned going back to work — exhausted, insecure, needing something like encouragement — and instead Nathaniel had said something nearly identical, with that same easy, careless smile.
May you like
I had never forgotten it. No stranger on earth could have accidentally landed on that exact sentence.
Nathaniel Wren was alive. And he had chosen, deliberately, not to come home.
