The first letter told Alexander about the pregnancy.
The second contained a photograph of two newborn girls beneath knitted yellow blankets.
The third asked for nothing except a private conversation.
The fourth was written after Isabelle saw Alexander photographed beside Carmen at a foundation gala.
I no longer know whether my letters reach you.
I need to believe your silence is yours, because the alternative means someone has decided our daughters are a problem to be managed.
Alexander pressed his hand over his mouth.
He remembered that gala.
Carmen had praised his focus that evening.
She told him Isabelle had chosen a simpler life and that pursuing her would only humiliate them both.
He had wanted to believe her.
That was the part no document could excuse.
Carmen had lied, but Alexander had accepted the lie because it protected him from rejection.
He had searched for Isabelle for several months through people who reported to his mother, then allowed work to become his answer.
The next morning, he returned for another supervised visit.
Eleanor was drawing at a low table.
Sophia was attempting to balance six crayons across the back of her hand.
Alexander brought no gifts.
Denise had warned him not to arrive with expensive toys or promises.
The girls needed consistency, not spectacle.
He sat across from Eleanor.
“What are you drawing?”
“A house.”
He recognized it from Isabelle’s letter: a white house beside the sea, a dark roof, stars above the chimney.
“Who lives there?”
“Mom was going to.”
Eleanor added another window.
“And you?”
“Maybe.”
“Could I see it when you finish?”
She covered the page with one arm.
“Maybe.”
Sophia dropped the crayons.
“Do you own an airplane?”
“The company owns one.”
“That means yes.”
“It means I use one.”
“Do you own a castle?”
“No.”
“A hundred houses?”
“No.”
“Denise said you were very rich.”
Denise looked up from her notes.
“Denise said he had substantial resources.”
Sophia frowned.
“That means very rich.”
Alexander nodded.
“It does.”
“Then why didn’t you find us?”
The room changed.
Eleanor’s crayon stopped moving.
Alexander could have blamed Carmen.
He could have displayed the letters and made himself another victim of the same villain.
But the girls had just lost their mother.
They did not need adults competing over innocence.
“I didn’t know you existed,” he said.
