My father didn't wait for security, and he didn't wait for an umbrella.
He lunged to his feet and sprinted across the ballroom, shoving past the maître d’ and tearing through the kitchen double doors.
Ethan and I followed right behind him, kicking off my high heels so I could run down the stainless-steel prep corridor in my wedding gown.
Behind us, Diane’s shrill complaints faded into the humid Chicago night as the emergency exit banged open.
The alley behind the luxury hotel was dark, narrow, and slick with grease and drizzling rain.
Near a stack of damp wooden shipping pallets, huddled on a strip of cardboard, was a woman.
She wore an oversized military field jacket, drenched from the rain, her head resting against a brick wall.
Her breathing came in shallow, rattling gasps.
“Lily!” my father cried out, throwing himself into the muddy puddle beside her.
He pulled her into his arms, lifting her head onto his lapel without caring that black water soaked through his tuxedo.
The woman’s eyelids fluttered open weakly.
Her face was painfully thin, her skin burning with fever, but her blue eyes were an exact twin to Maya’s.
“Robert...?” she breathed, her voice paper-thin.
“I’m here, Lily. I’m right here. Oh God, forgive me, I’m here.”
Ethan knelt beside them, instantly pressing two fingers to the woman’s wrist to check her pulse.
“Call nine-one-one right now!” Ethan yelled over his shoulder to the kitchen staff peering through the service doors. “Her pulse is thready! She’s in septic shock!”
I pulled Maya close against my silk bodice, shielding the trembling child from the sight of her mother’s failing body.
Lily’s gaze drifted past Robert’s shoulder, locking onto Maya.
Then her eyes moved to me, taking in the white lace and veil drenched in the rain.
“You have your mother’s chin, Clara,” Lily whispered, coughing up blood that spattered against Robert’s white dress shirt.
My heart stopped beating in my chest.
She knew my name.
She knew my mother.
My father pressed his forehead against Lily’s wet temple, sobbing openly.
“Why didn't you write to me, Lily? Why didn't you tell me about Maya?”
Lily raised a trembling, scarred hand, weakly brushing my father’s face.
“I did write to you, Robert...” she gasped, each word a monumental struggle against the cold.
“Twenty letters... over eight years...”
“Every single one was sent to your family estate.”
“And every single one was returned to me marked ‘Addressee Deceased.’”
