PART 2 — Blue Balloons and a Black Car
The blue confetti was still drifting across the yacht club deck when Gordon walked back to the party and said one word to his son. “Inside.”
Ryan followed him into the empty dining room, still holding his champagne flute. Diane came too, because Diane always came.
“How much?” Ryan asked once Gordon had explained. The cheer had drained from his voice.
“With interest? Just over three point four million.”
“We don’t have three point four million in thirty days.”
“No,” Gordon said. “We don’t.”
Diane sank into a chair. “She wouldn’t dare. Hannah’s soft. She cries at commercials.”
“She signed it, Diane.”
Through the glass doors, Brooke was watching them. Ryan said afterward that he saw something on her face he had never noticed before. It wasn’t worry. It was calculation.
She walked in, heels clicking, a blue balloon still tied around her wrist. “What’s going on?” When nobody answered fast enough, she looked straight at Ryan. “Is the marina still yours or not?”
Ryan blinked. “Brooke—”
“It’s a simple question, Ryan. Is it yours?”
“It’s complicated.”
She untied the balloon and let it float up to the ceiling. “Then I need some air,” she said. She walked out of the club and didn’t come back.
Meanwhile, I was zipping suitcases.
Three of them stood in the hallway. The girls had refused to take off their recital dresses. “Princesses fly in gowns,” Lily announced, and I didn’t have the heart to argue. Rosie had fallen asleep on the couch hugging her stuffed lamb, Clover.
Lily sat on the bottom stair. “Mommy, is Daddy coming to say goodbye?”
I knelt in front of her. “I told him we were leaving today, sweetheart. His lawyer has the papers. I told him twice.”
“But is he coming?”
“I don’t know.”
She stared at her silver dance shoes. “He went to the yacht club party instead of my recital.”
I hadn’t told her. Children always find out.
“Grandma Diane posted it,” she said. “Ava’s mom showed us her phone. Blue balloons.” She swallowed hard. “Is a boy better than me?”
I pulled her into my arms, gown and all. “No. Not ever. Not one tiny bit. Do you hear me?”
She nodded against my shoulder. But six-year-olds don’t believe words. They believe empty chairs.
My phone had been vibrating since three o’clock. Ryan. Diane. Gordon. Ryan. Ryan. Phil Garner. Ryan.
On the ninth call, I answered.
“Hannah.” He sounded out of breath. “What did you do?”
“I protected my daughters.”
“You’re taking the marina? My grandfather’s marina?”
“The marina my father’s money saved. And I’m not taking anything, Ryan. I’m collecting what your family promised in writing. You said you’d send checks. I decided not to wait.”
“You can’t do this to me on the worst day of my life.”
I almost laughed. “This morning you called it the best.”
Silence. Then he asked, “Where are you?”
“Leaving.”
“Leaving for where?”
“Dublin. Our flight is at seven.”
“Ireland? You can’t take them out of the country!”
“You signed the relocation clause, Ryan. You told me to move to the moon.”
I ended the call.
At 5:40, a black car took us to the private terminal at Westfield Airfield. Margaret had sent the Mercer Trust’s jet, an extravagance she called “the only sensible way to move two sleepy girls across an ocean.” Two pilots in crisp uniforms waited near the lit stairs.
Lily gasped. “Is this ours?”
“Just for tonight.”
I lifted Rosie onto my hip. Lily held my hand with one of hers and clutched the little white purse she insisted matched mine with the other. We were three steps from the stairs when tires screeched outside the hangar.
Ryan burst through the glass doors at a run. Gordon and Diane followed, Diane still in her champagne dress, one hand already pressed to her mouth.
“Hannah! Wait!”
Everyone in the hangar went still. Ryan stopped a few feet away from us, chest heaving. Then Ryan Caldwell, who in eleven years had never once apologized first, dropped to his knees on the polished floor.
“Please,” he said, palms open. “Please don’t get on that plane.”
Lily pressed against my side. Rosie stared at him over my shoulder.
“Is this about the marina?” I asked.
“No.” His voice cracked. “I mean, yes, but no. Hannah, listen.” He looked at the girls, then back at me, and his face did something I had never seen it do. It crumbled.
“Brooke’s gone,” he said. “She left an hour ago. She texted me from the highway.” He swallowed. “There’s no son, Hannah. There was never a baby at all.”
