letting us believe she was gone.
I carried anger for being robbed of two years.
Sometimes we talked until sunrise.
Sometimes we couldn’t speak at all.
But we were learning.
“You hate me a little,” she said.
I looked at her.
“Some days.”
“Fair.”
“And I love you.”
“Some days?”
“Every day.”
She smiled.
It was the first smile that looked exactly like the woman I remembered.
Then she became serious.
“There’s something I haven’t told you.”
I stared at her.
“Genevieve.”
“I know.”
“I have reached my lifetime limit for secret laboratories, fake deaths, and criminal fathers.”
She laughed quietly.
“This one’s different.”
She reached into her pocket.
A small envelope.
Inside was a photograph.
Sofia Ward.
Elena’s younger sister.
She looked around sixteen.
Thin.
Dark hair.
Smiling despite the hospital gown she wore.
Beside her stood Genevieve.
And between them was a baby.
I looked at my wife.
