Chapter 8 - A Father's Regret
By afternoon, the estate was purged. Vanessa and Donald had been driven away in separate unmarked vans, their names stripped from the Whitmore directory forever. The scandal had been contained within the family walls, but the emotional carnage remained raw and exposed.
I was in the private garden conservatory, helping Noah and Grace build a wooden train track while Ethan and Lily took their afternoon nap in the double stroller beside me.
The glass doors slid open quietly. Julian stepped inside.
He had changed out of his wedding tuxedo into a dark sweater and jeans, but he looked older, gaunt, his soul thoroughly scraped raw. He stopped five paces away, kneeling down on the flagstones so he wasn't towering over the children.
Noah looked up, tilting his head. He held up a red wooden train engine. “Car?” he asked innocently.
Julian’s breath hitched. A single tear tracked down his cheek, disappearing into his stubble. “A train, buddy. That’s a train.”
He extended a trembling hand, waiting, never daring to cross the invisible line I had drawn between us. Noah, possessing all the innocence of a two-year-old, waddled forward and placed the small wooden toy into Julian’s open palm.
Julian broke. He bent his head, pressing his forehead against the floor, his shoulders shaking as he wept for everything he had thrown away.
“Evelyn,” he choked out, his voice cracked with an agony so deep it was almost painful to witness. “I don't expect you to forgive me. I know I was weak. I was a coward. I let my father's expectations and my own stupid pride blind me to the only thing that ever mattered.”
I watched him quietly, my heart guarded, though the sharp edges of my anger had begun to dull into cold reality.
“You chose them over us, Julian,” I said softly. “You didn't ask me how I felt. You didn't fight for our marriage. You let your father throw money at me like I was a broken appliance you needed hauled away.”
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“I will spend the rest of my life making it right,” he begged, lifting his tear-streaked face to look at me. “I don't care about the Whitmore fortune. I don't care about the company. Take it all. Take every dime I have. Just... don't take them away. Don't take yourself away. Let me be their father. Let me be the man you deserved.”
“You are their biological father, Julian. That is a fact of science,” I answered, my tone unwavering. “I will never keep you from knowing your children. But as for you and me? That woman died the day she signed those divorce papers in tears while you held another woman's hand.”
