Chapter 3
The box contained a breathtaking, hand-knitted baby blanket in the softest shade of seafoam green, and beneath it, a collection of rare, vintage pediatric books. It was a wildly expensive, incredibly thoughtful gift. But who had sent it? It clearly wasn’t Julian—he wouldn’t use an anonymous intermediary, and the handwriting wasn’t his.
Someone knows. Someone who knows him. The mystery gnawed at me through a restless weekend. On Sunday afternoon, a tentative knock on my door startled me from my medical journals. I opened it to find Julian standing in the hallway, looking profoundly out of place in my modest, cozy apartment building. Beside him, her arm in a pristine white cast, was Chloe.
“Dr. Clara!” Chloe beamed, holding up a plastic container with her good hand. “Dad and I baked cookies. Well, Dad burned the first batch, but these ones are good!”
I couldn’t help the exhausted laugh that escaped my lips. I looked at Julian, who was rubbing the back of his neck, looking deeply embarrassed and vulnerable.
“We are attempting to earn our way into your good graces via sugar,” Julian admitted, offering a small, self-deprecating smile. “May we come in?”
Against every survival instinct I possessed, I stepped aside. My apartment was small, filled with warm amber lamps, overflowing bookshelves, and the undeniable evidence of impending motherhood. Chloe immediately zeroed in on the ultrasound picture pinned to my fridge.
“Is that the baby?” she asked, her eyes wide with awe. “It looks like a little bean.”
“It’s getting bigger every day,” I said softly.
Julian watched me, his expression unreadable. He reached into his coat pocket and pulled out an object wrapped in soft velvet. He walked over and gently placed it on my kitchen counter.
“I didn’t bring this to buy your forgiveness,” he said quietly, ensuring Chloe was distracted by my bookshelf. “I brought it because I wanted you to understand what I’ve been doing since the night you left.”
May you like
I peeled back the velvet. It was an intricately carved, antique wooden music box. It looked incredibly old, the dark mahogany polished to a high shine, though I could see the faint, meticulous lines where shattered wood had been painstakingly glued back together.
“I found it in an antique shop,” Julian explained, his voice low and thick with emotion. “It was completely destroyed. The gears were rusted, the wood was splintered into dozens of pieces. The owner told me it was a lost cause. I spent the last five months taking it apart in my study. I cleaned every microscopic gear, replaced the pins, glued the wood.”
