Nathan pulled his arm away from the woman.

“What did you do?”

She shook her head.

“Nothing.”

Grace laughed through tears.

“You told me Nathan abandoned us.”

Nathan stared at Grace.

“I was told you lost the babies.”

Silence.

Grace’s face drained of color.

“What?”

Nathan swallowed.

“My father showed me hospital documents.”

Grace looked at the woman in blue.

“She brought me those same documents.”

Nathan slowly turned toward her.

Her composure finally broke.

“Your father told me to handle it.”

“Handle what?”

“The scandal.”

Grace stepped closer.

“What scandal?”

The woman’s eyes filled.

“Your father didn’t want Nathan marrying you.”

One of the girls squeezed Grace’s hand.

Nathan looked sick.

“So you told Grace I left?”

The woman nodded.

“And you told me my children died?”

She couldn’t answer.

Nathan covered his mouth.

For eight years, Grace had believed Nathan knowingly abandoned three newborn daughters.

And Nathan had mourned children he was told never survived.

Grace whispered,

“Then who sent the money?”

Nathan looked at her.

“What money?”

“Every month. For the girls.”

The woman in blue closed her eyes.

Nathan stared at her.

“You knew where they were the entire time.”

She began crying.

“Your father made me promise.”

Nathan stepped away as if touching her suddenly disgusted him.

Grace looked down at her daughters.

Then back at him.

“You never knew?”

“No.”

His voice broke.

“I swear to you, Grace. I never knew.”

The smallest girl peeked from behind her mother.

“Are you really our daddy?”

Nathan couldn’t answer.

He slowly crouched several feet away, afraid to frighten them.

“I think…”

His eyes filled.

“I think I was supposed to be.”

The girl with the red ribbon studied his face.

Then reached inside her tiny backpack.

She pulled out an old photograph.

Grace froze.

It showed Nathan years earlier, asleep beside Grace’s hospital bed.

Three newborn babies were lying nearby.

Nathan stared at it.

On the back was handwriting he recognized immediately.

His father’s.

Nathan read the sentence aloud.

“If he ever finds them, everything becomes theirs.”

Grace whispered,

“What does that mean?”

Nathan looked toward the woman in blue.

She was crying openly now.

“Tell her.”

The woman finally confessed.

Nathan’s grandfather had created a family trust.

If Nathan ever had children, ownership of the family company would eventually pass to them.

But if he remained childless, control stayed with Nathan’s father.

Grace stared at her daughters.

“He erased them for money?”

Nathan looked at the three little girls he had spent eight years believing were dead.

Then he removed his watch and placed it on the ground, almost like he was trying to make himself less intimidating.

“I can’t ask you to call me Dad.”

The girls watched him silently.

“I missed every birthday. Every first day of school. Every nightmare. Every scraped knee.”

His voice cracked.

“And none of you even knew I was missing you.”

The smallest girl slowly walked toward him.

Nathan didn’t move.

She touched his face.

“Mommy cried because she thought you didn’t want us.”

Nathan closed his eyes.

“I know.”

Then Grace heard him whisper the only promise he could make honestly.

“I can’t give you those eight years back.”

He opened his eyes and looked at all three daughters.

“But nobody is stealing another day.”