Page 51 of Broken Destiny

“Sounds perfect. See you then.”

I ended the call and found myself smiling, knowing that something broken was finally beginning to heal.

In the evening,I dressed the children for the annual fair in the village.

I kept replaying everything that had happened over the past week—the meeting at the office, Caleb and Greg showing up at breakfast, the shock of seeing him standing in my doorway as if the years between us had never existed.

He had found me after all. He had promised he would. And he had kept that promise. Or was it simply a coincidence?

Guess I would never know.

What troubled me the most was his silence. He hadn’t asked questions. He hadn’t confronted me. He hadn’t demanded answers. Instead, he had watched me carefully. That frightened me more than his anger.

Maybe it was because he didn’t care anymore.

He was getting married. He had a new life, new priorities, and new dreams that had nothing to do with me. I doubted he spent even a moment thinking about the past we once shared.

I had seen pictures of his fiancée online. She was beautiful and the daughter of a business tycoon and a successful business owner in her own right. Their photos were splashed everywhere across social media like a curated love story.

Caleb, on the other hand, had always claimed he disliked the media—or so he had told me when we were together. Watching him smile for the cameras in those photographs made me question everything. Was he still the same man I had loved? Or had time reshaped him into someone I no longer recognized?

I opened Instagram as a guest user and searched his profile. He wasn’t very active. He had thousands of followers but followed only a handful of people. His posts were sparse, his stories rare, as if he shared just enough to maintain appearances without revealing anything real.

I had called Elle during the week and told her everything. She had gone quiet at first, and then her shock came through in a rush of questions I could barely keep up with.

“What are you going to do when you see him at the office?” she had finally asked.

“I’ll be professional. Civil. Nothing more.”

And that was exactly what I was going to do.

“What are you doing, Mama?” Lucas asked, sneaking up beside me, pulling me back to the present, my phone almost slipping out of my hand.

Startled, I quickly closed the page on my phone.

“I was researching something for work, honey,” I lied. “Is everything alright?”

“I was wondering if I can hang out with my friends at the fair for a bit when we get there. Is that okay?”

I crouched so I could look him in the eye.

“There are going to be a lot of people there, sweetheart. You remember what happened last time. I can’t have you wandering off and getting lost.”

“But just for a little while, please, Mama.”

His puppy-dog eyes and pout softened my resolve.

“I’ll think about it,” I said.

“Thanks, Mama!”

“Emma?” I called out.

My daughter bounced into the room wearing only her diaper, her hair tangled into soft curls, both dolls clutched tightly in her hands.

The sight made me laugh.

She had become such a chatterbox over the past year, copying everything Lucas did and said. Some nights, when I watched her sleep, I noticed she curled into the same position Caleb used to—one arm bent above her head, her hand resting near her ear.Father’s daughter.