Chapter 7
Chapter 7: The Face in the Crowd
Her name was Claire Moreau. At twenty-eight, she was a fixture in the glossy magazines, known for hosting lavish charity dinners, her classic old-money beauty, and a life that looked far too polished to have ever been damaged or messy.
But the second she saw the photograph held up by the small boy in the street, she didn't look twenty-eight anymore. She looked nineteen again—terrified, exhausted, and trapped in a private, sterile clinic she had never chosen to be in.
The boy stood in front of her, clutching a faded picture. "My mother’s name was Marisol," the boy, Nico, said. His voice was small but determined. "She cleaned rooms at Saint Jerome’s. She died last week. Before she died, she said if I was brave enough, I had to find the woman in this picture."
Claire gripped the photo with careful, trembling fingers. She flipped it over. On the back was a faded blue hospital stamp: Saint Jerome’s Women’s Wing.
Her throat closed completely. She couldn't breathe.
She had given birth there nine years ago, after her father, a tyrannical shipping magnate, had forced her out of college for six months. He had told the world, and all her friends, that she was in Europe "for treatment" for exhaustion. When she woke up after hours of agonizing labor, groggy and terrified, he had sat by her bed and told her the baby had been stillborn.
She had believed him. Why wouldn't she? There had been blood, the heavy fog of morphine, and absolutely no one on her side to tell her otherwise. She had mourned an empty grave in her heart for almost a decade.
Nico wiped his wet face with his sleeve. "Marisol worked laundry in the clinic. She heard the doctors talking to your father. She heard them say I was not dead. She took me before some lawyer could sell me somewhere else."
Claire stared at him, her vision blurring with tears. The shape of his mouth was her own. The way his left eyebrow tilted upward when he was frightened—it was exactly like hers. For years she had mourned an infant she had never been allowed to bury. Now, he stood in front of her, soaked in dirty street water, accusing her with the courage she had never possessed.
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"Why didn’t you come?" Nico asked, his voice cracking. "Why didn't you look for me?"
She answered with the ugliest, most painful truth she had ever spoken. "Because they told me there was nobody left to come back for. They told me you were dead."
