“Regina, Lucy, Valerie!” she snapped. “What are you doing?”
She immediately pulled the girls closer and offered me a nervous apology. The reaction felt far too intense for a simple conversation in a public park.
“I’m sorry, sir. They shouldn’t have bothered you.”
I stood up, confused and increasingly uneasy.
“They weren’t bothering me. I just wanted to ask—”
The nanny cut me off before I could finish.
“Ms. Montgomery is going to be furious.”
The name stopped me cold. Montgomery. I knew that name. Everyone in New York knew that name.
As the nanny rushed the girls toward a black armored SUV waiting at the curb, memories I had spent years burying suddenly came rushing back. The woman from Seattle had never told me much about herself, but there had been hints. Expensive clothes disguised as casual wear. Phone calls she refused to answer. The careful way she avoided questions about her family.
And now three little girls carrying her face had just told me their mother shared the exact tattoo I had drawn.
