“Please don’t leave,” he said. “I need to explain.”
“You’ve got 30 seconds.”
He swallowed.
“My name is Daniel. Last night, the girl at your register said her mother’s name. Marilyn.”
I stared at him.
“Marilyn was the woman I loved most in my life.”
That was not what I expected.
He kept going before I could cut him off.
“We were together when we were young. We planned everything. Then my parents stepped in. They wanted someone wealthier. Someone they approved of. I let them decide my future for me, and I left her.”
I said nothing.
“Then I saw that little girl,” he said. “And she looks exactly like me.”
Still, I said nothing.
“I thought I was imagining it. I waited outside the store. I followed from across the street. When she got home, I knocked on the door. Marilyn opened it.”
“I know how that sounds,” he added quickly. “I should have handled it better. But I wasn’t thinking clearly.”
“What happened when Marilyn opened the door?”
“She looked at me like she’d seen a ghost. Then I saw the little boy. He looks like me too.”
My whole body went still.
“She never told me she was pregnant,” he said. “She had twins.”
“You’re telling me the little girl is your daughter.”
“And the boy is my son.”
I should have walked away right then.
Instead, I thought about the milk.
The fever.
