The Flower Girl Who Knew His Dead Wife

CHAPTER 4 - THE MEMORY THAT RETURNED

The words struck harder than any accusation.

Daniel sat down because his knees gave way under him.

"I was told the truck crossed the line," he said. "The police said Claire died at the scene."

Elena nodded once. "That is what the report said."

Ana had gone white. "What are you talking about?"

Daniel looked at her, then away. Shame rose from a place he had kept buried for years. "We were fighting that night."

The room held still around him.

He stared at the rows of lilies in silver buckets, at his own shaking hands, anywhere but her face.

"We had learned that morning we might not be able to have children. I said things I can never take back. In the car, I kept arguing. I took my eyes off the road. A truck hit us on the passenger side and pushed us into the river."

Ana pressed a hand to her temple.

Daniel forced himself to continue. "I got out through the driver's window. I tried to reach you. The car sank too fast. Rescue teams found me unconscious on the bank. Later they said your body had been recovered downstream and badly damaged." His throat closed. "I believed them because I already believed I had killed you."

Elena crossed her arms tightly. "Weeks later, my daughter called me from a hospital under another name. She didn't know herself. She was pregnant."

Daniel looked up so sharply his chair scraped.

Ana stared at her mother. "Pregnant?"

Elena's voice broke. "You gave birth to Lila seven months after the crash."

Silence slammed into all three of them.

Daniel's eyes flew to the stairs.

Lila.

The blue eyes. The age. The ocean dream.

Ana swayed, then gripped the counter. Fragments were returning now; he could see it in her face. The beach. The ring. A man laughing as he burned pancakes on a Sunday morning.

Then one memory cut deeper than all the rest.

She looked at Daniel with horror and grief. "You told me, 'If this is the life we're getting, maybe love isn't enough.'"

He closed his eyes. He had said it.

It was the cruelest sentence of his life.

A small voice came from the stairs.

"Mommy?"

Lila stood there clutching the old photograph.

"Is he my dad?"