I pressed my palms flat on the table to keep them from shaking.
“You disappeared,” I whispered. “You didn’t call. You didn’t write. Nothing.”
“I know.” Peter didn’t look away. “My parents arranged for me to marry the daughter of my father’s business partner. They told me that if I refused, they’d cut me off completely. I was seventeen, Eleanor. I didn’t fight them. I should have. I’ve thought about that every day since.”
“You had thirty years to say something.”
“You seemed happy,” Peter said. “I checked on you from a distance. I saw you with Chloe when she was little. I saw the house. I told myself you’d chosen a good life, and I had no right to walk back into it.”
“Then what changed?”
He drew a slow breath.
“Three months ago, I had a dinner meeting in Chicago with a client. Marcus was two tables away with a woman. He wasn’t hiding it well. He held her hand across the bread basket.”
