After Cranston left, Owen remained in his study, staring at the locket in his palm. The weight of failure pressed down on him like a physical thing. He’d promised Nicholas he’d look after the people he cared about. Had sworn on their friendship that he’d protect what mattered to his friend.
And he’d failed. Completely, utterly failed.
While he had been playing house, learning to change nappies and singing lullabies, Adele had been dying alone in a squalid boarding house. She’d been sick and frightened, with no one to comfort her in her final moments except a stranger who barely knew her name.
“Owen?” Iris’s voice came from the doorway. It was soft with concern. “Cranston looked rather grim when he left. What did he want?”
Owen closed his fist around the locket, not ready to share this burden. He was not ready to see the pain in her eyes when she learned the truth.
“Nothing important. Just a business matter that required attention.”
“Are you sure? You look…” She stepped into the room and closed the door behind herself. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”
How astute she was. He had indeed seen a ghost—the ghost of his inadequacy and his failure to protect the people who mattered most.
“Where’s Evie?” he asked, deflecting her concern.
“Napping in the nursery. Owen, what’s wrong? You’re frightening me.”
He couldn’t lie to her. Not anymore, not after everything they’d shared. But he also couldn’t bring himself to speak the words aloud. he could not admit that while they’d been building their perfect little family, a woman had died alone because he’d been too slow, too careful, and too focused on his happiness to save her.
“Adele is dead.”
The simple statement fell into silence like a stone into still water. Iris went very pale as she sank into the chair across from his desk.
“Dead? When? How?”
“Three days ago. Consumption, in a boarding house in Dover.” Owen’s voice sounded hollow to his own ears. “She was alone.Sick and alone and calling out for Nicholas in her final moments.”
“Oh, Owen.” Iris’s eyes filled with tears. “I’m so sorry.”
“I should have found her sooner. Should have looked harder, searched more thoroughly. If I’d acted faster, if I’d been less concerned with protecting our secrets and more focused on actually helping her…”
“You did everything you could.”
“Did I? Because it doesn’t feel that way. It feels like I failed her. Failed Nicholas. Failed everyone who trusted me to do better.” He opened his fist, revealing the locket. “She kept his picture. Carried it with her even when she had nothing else left.”
Iris rose from her chair and moved around the desk to stand beside him. Her hand settled on his shoulder. It was warm and steady. “This isn’t your fault.”
“Isn’t it? I have resources, connections, and ways of finding people that she didn’t. I could have helped her if I’d tried harder.”
“You tried. You searched for weeks and even hired people to investigate. You did more than most would have done for a stranger.”
“She wasn’t a stranger. She was Nicholas’s love. The mother of his child. That made her family, and I let her die alone.” Owen’s voice cracked slightly. “What kind of man does that make me?”
“Human.” Iris’s hand moved to cup his cheek, and she forced him to meet her eyes. “Fallible and human and doing the best you could under impossible circumstances.”
“It wasn’t enough.”
“It was all you had to give. And Owen, you found her. Maybe not in time to save her, but in time to make sure that she has a proper burial. In time to make sure her sacrifice for Evie means something.”
“Her sacrifice?”
“She gave up everything for her daughter. Left her with people who could provide safety and love and a future she couldn’t offer. That wasn’t abandonment; that was the most profound act of motherly love imaginable.”
Her words illuminated the situation for him. He’d been so focused on his failures that he’d missed the heroism in Adele’s choice. She’d been dying, probably knew it, and had used her remaining strength to secure Evie’s future rather than clinging to a child she couldn’t protect.
“Evie will never know her,” he said quietly.
