"I didn't," Clare said gently.
Evan shrugged.
"You were going to."
Dean knew that was probably true.
Clare crouched so she was closer to his height.
"I'm sorry about your mom."
Evan looked at her for a long moment.
"Thank you."
Then he went back to the truck.
Dean watched.
"He does that."
"Talks about her?"
"Sometimes."
"I think that's good."
"I know."
Clare stood.
"What's his name?"
"Evan."
"He looks like you."
"Everybody says that."
"I see someone else too."
Dean looked at her.
"His mother?"
She nodded.
Dean said quietly, "Anna."
Clare repeated it.
"Anna."
Then she looked toward the truck again.
Something in her expression returned.
The same strange hurt from before.
Dean caught it.
"What aren't you telling me?"
She shook her head.
"Not now."
"Clare."
"Fix the car."
"No."
"Dean."
"You almost disappeared into yourself when I told you I had a child."
Her jaw tightened.
"Because I did something stupid."
"When?"
"Four years ago."
Dean stared.
Clare looked toward the road.
Cars passed behind them.
"Four years ago," she said, "I was living in London."
"I know."
"You knew?"
"I saw an article."
She looked surprised.
"About the museum project?"
"Yes."
"You followed my work?"
Dean picked up the wrench.
"Apparently I was bad at pretending too."
Clare smiled sadly.
Then continued.
"I had been there almost two years."
"I was doing well."
"Better than well."
"Everybody kept telling me how lucky I was."
Dean listened.
"I had the career I wanted. The apartment. Friends. Travel. All the things I said I needed when I left."
She swallowed.
"And I was miserable."
Dean looked down.
Clare continued.
"Not every day."
"That would be easier."
"I was happy enough to convince myself I'd made the right choice."
"But whenever something happened..."
She looked toward him.
"Something good."
"Something terrible."
"Something funny."
"You were still the first person I wanted to tell."
Dean's hand tightened around the wrench.
"So I called you."
His head lifted.
"What?"
"Four years ago."
"I called the old number."
"You still had it."
Dean remembered the number.
Brooklyn.
He had kept it far longer than necessary before transferring it to a family plan.
"What happened?"
Clare's voice became softer.
"A woman answered."
Dean felt cold despite the morning sun.
"Anna."
"I didn't know her name."
"What did she say?"
Clare looked directly into his eyes.
"I asked for you."
"She laughed and said you were outside with the baby."
Dean stopped breathing.
The world contracted into that sentence.
Outside with the baby.
He saw the day.
Four years ago.
Late spring.
Anna sitting in their kitchen.
Evan eight months old.
Dean washing mud from a stroller in the courtyard.
Anna answering the apartment phone because Dean had left his cell charging inside.
He remembered her appearing at the door afterward.
"Someone called."
"Who?"
"Wrong number, I think."
Dean had not asked more.
Now his chest tightened.
"She didn't tell me."
Clare's eyes widened.
"What?"
"Anna never told me it was you."
"I didn't give my name."
"Why not?"
Clare laughed once, almost angry.
"Because the woman I thought was your wife said you were outside with your baby."