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The bridge seemed to tilt beneath me.
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I looked from one face to the other, and that strange cracking in my head spread wider. Two little girls in yellow raincoats. Birthday candles. Small hands reaching for mine. A woman laughing in a kitchen while flour dusted her cheek.
Then pain shot through my temples, and I stumbled back.
The woman rushed forward. “Don’t force it. Please.”
I looked at her, breathing hard. “Who are you?”
She swallowed. “I’m Nora. I was your wife.”
Was.
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That single word told me there had been a funeral, a grave, and years of grief I could not remember giving anyone.
Niles shifted behind her. “I recognized you at the café. I used to work with your brother, Julian. I saw your missing posters years ago. Your family searched everywhere.”
Nora nodded, her voice breaking. “You vanished after a car accident 13 years ago. They found the car near the river, but not you. There was blood, Mark. So much blood. Everyone thought…”
She could not finish.
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Mia did it for her. “We thought you were dead.”
Sophie hugged herself. “We were four years old then.”
I covered my mouth as a sound escaped me, not quite a sob, not quite a breath. Four years old. They had grown up without me while I slept under concrete, carrying boxes for cash and wondering why no one loved me enough to look.
But they had looked.
Nora came closer, cautious and shaking.
“We never stopped. Not really. Your mother kept your room the same until she passed. Julian still checks every hospital list when unidentified patients are posted. I remarried three years ago because I thought life had forced me to. But I never stopped wondering.”
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I stared at her ring, then at her face. There was no anger in her eyes. Only hurt, hope, and fear.
“I don’t remember leaving you,” I said. “I swear I don’t.”
“I know,” she murmured.
Sophie rushed forward first.
She threw her arms around my waist and held on like a child, not a teenager. Mia joined her a second later, crying into my jacket.
I stood stiff at first, terrified of claiming a love I could not remember earning. Then my arms moved on their own. I held them both, and something inside me softened until I could barely stand.
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“I’m sorry,” I whispered into their hair. “I’m so sorry.”
Mia shook her head against my chest. “You came back.”
“I didn’t know where to go.”
Sophie looked up at me. “Then come with us now.”
I glanced at my tent. It looked smaller than ever. A pile of blankets. A dented cup. Thirteen years of surviving without knowing what I had lost.
Nora wiped her face. “There’s a doctor waiting. We can take this slowly. Nobody expects you to remember everything today.”
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“What if I never do?” I asked.
Her chin trembled, but her answer was steady. “Then we start again with what we have.”
I looked at my daughters, at their matching tearful smiles, and for the first time in 13 years, the emptiness inside me did not feel endless.
“My name is Mark?” I asked softly.
Mia nodded. “Yes, but Dad works, too.”