Hearing the cries behind me, my steps faltered for a moment, but I didn't stop.
I returned to the office.
My friend, Piper, who was sorting through teaching materials, looked up.
"Aliyah, I heard someone came looking for you... Wait—why are you crying?"
Her words made me reach up and touch the corner of my eye. Sure enough, my fingers came away wet.
Before Lysander brought the child, I had convinced myself I'd moved on. I told myself I could pass him on the street one day and greet him like a stranger: "Do you remember me? I used to hold you when you were little."
But the truth was, I hadn't let go at all.
I pressed my lips together and forced the tide of feeling back down. My voice trembled when I said, "Lysander came looking for me with the child."
“What?” The name ignited Piper’s anger like gasoline. “He came to find you? Does he still think he hasn’t hurt you enough? Where is he? I’m going to kill him!”
She yanked open a drawer, grabbed a fruit knife, and made a dramatic dash for the door. However, she stopped as if remembering something, panic flashing across her face. "When they came, there weren't any police with them, right? You didn't go meet the child on your own—this shouldn't count as you contacting him, right? It won't affect anything, will it?"
The day after our divorce, the housekeeper called me in frantic and said Lysander and Georgette had gone out to celebrate their anniversary and the baby at home had a high fever. The nanny had something urgent and couldn’t stay. She asked if I could come. Panic made me rush there by taxi.
At the hospital, while we were having the boy examined, Lysander and Georgette arrived in a hurry—flanked by two policemen. Before I could say anything, Lysander said in a cold voice, "Aliyah, you're violating the ruling by taking the child. I'll apply for enforcement—you'll never see him again."
The child in my arms was burning with a fever. I tried to point that out. However, Lysander snatched the boy from me and handed him to Georgette, looking at me with a chill I hadn't seen in a long time. "Remember this: the child's mother is Georgette. He has nothing to do with you anymore."
The policemen had me removed and carted off to teach me a lesson. I spent three days in detention.
When I was finally released, Piper met me at the gate in tears. She looked at the hollow expression on my face and sobbed, "Aliyah, let's leave this place. Start over somewhere new."
So I left Manhattan and didn't set foot here for five years. I thought that would be enough—that I would never see again the angel who had once given me hope and the demon who had thrown me into hell.
"I won't see him again," I promised emphatically. "Don't worry. We'll never meet."
I believed it—because the patient man who had once been Lysander was gone. I never expected him to show up the next day after work, with the child in tow.
"Aliyah," he said, voice full of something like pleading, "today is the child's birthday. His wish is to have you sit down and eat one meal with him. For his sake, will you consider it?"
There were so many unsaid things behind his eyes; he looked at me with an eagerness I hadn't seen in years. Standing beside him, Shiloh wore the same hopeful look.
Before I could answer, Piper appeared out of nowhere, furious. She lifted a basin and hurled the water straight at Lysander. "You scumbag! What right do you have to come looking for Aliyah? Get out of here! She doesn't want to see you!"
