Chapter 123 Our daughter is alive

Chapter 123 Our daughter is alive

Alexander's POV

Victoria cried against my chest until her shoulders shook. I held her tighter, one hand resting against the back of her head while my own tears continued to fall. I didn't try to stop them because there was no reason to.

For twenty-two years, I had learned how to live with grief.

I had learned how to carry it quietly, how to answer questions about our daughter without allowing my voice to break, how to smile when someone mentioned children, how to walk past families in public without wondering what our little girl might have looked like at their age.

I had learned how to survive the loss but I had never learned how to survive finding her because this wasn't simply happiness. It was everything. It was grief and joy colliding so violently that I couldn't separate one from the other.

Victoria finally pulled back her face was wet with tears. "She's alive."

I nodded. "Yes."

She touched my face with trembling fingers. "She's really alive."

"Yes."

A broken laugh escaped her. "Our baby."

The word nearly destroyed me.

Our baby.

That was what she'd been when we'd lost her. A tiny girl, only a few hours old, too young to know her own name and too young to understand that the people who loved her were being told she'd died and now she was twenty-two.

A woman. A woman who had lived an entire lifetime we knew nothing about.

Victoria suddenly covered her mouth again. "What did they do to her?"

I went still because I knew exactly what she meant. Rita, Loki and Rebecca. The people who had raised Casey and the people who had somehow taken our daughter from us.

"I don't know." My voice was low. "But Michael is investigating."

Victoria shook her head. "I don't care about them right now." Her eyes filled again. "I care about her."

"I know."

"What if she thinks we abandoned her?" She asked as tears filled her eyes.

"We didn't." I assure her.

"But she doesn't know that."

I had no answer. That was the part that frightened me most. Truth didn't erase twenty-two years. We could tell Casey we had never abandoned her and we could show her the records and we could explain what we'd believed but she had still lived twenty-two years without us.

She had still grown up believing her biological parents were dead and she had still learned to live without ever expecting us to walk through a door and now we were going to appear in her life and tell her that everything she'd believed was wrong.

Victoria walked toward the desk, her eyes landed on the envelope and she picked it up. Her fingers trembled as she stared at the name written across the front.

Casey.

A fresh tear rolled down her cheek. "I wrote this before we knew."

"I know."

"I wrote it for a daughter I wasn't even sure existed." She pressed the envelope against her chest. "And now she does."

I stepped closer. "She always existed." Victoria looked at me. "We just didn't know where."

She nodded, tears filling her eyes again as she carefully placed the envelope back on the desk. "I want to give it to her."

"You will."

"What if she doesn't want it?"

"Then we'll respect that."

She closed her eyes, another tear slipping down her cheek. "I don't know if I can handle her rejecting me."

I reached for her hand and gently took it. "Victoria." She opened her eyes and looked at me. "She isn't rejecting you because she doesn't love you."

"But she doesn't know me."

"Exactly." I squeezed her fingers. "She can't reject a relationship she hasn't had the chance to build."

Her lips trembled as she looked down at our joined hands. "And if she doesn't want one?"

"Then we'll give her time."

Victoria was quiet for a moment before looking down at the envelope again. "You keep saying that."

"Because it's the only thing we can control."

She nodded slowly, her expression heavy with the weight of everything they had lost. "We can't get those years back."

"No."

"Twenty-two years."

"I know."

Her eyes filled again as the words came one after another, each one carrying another piece of the life they had missed. "She had twenty-two birthdays."

I swallowed. "Yes."

"Twenty-two Christmases."

"Yes."

"First days at school."

I looked away, unable to hide the ache in my chest. "Yes."

"First achievements."

"Yes."

"First heartbreak."

I couldn't answer. Victoria's voice broke. "Her first time falling in love." I looked back at her. "Her first time being afraid." She wiped her cheeks. "Her first time needing her mother."

That one hurt and I pulled her into my arms again. "I know."

She buried her face against me. "I wasn't there."

"You didn't choose not to be."

"But I wasn't there."

"Neither was I."

She looked up and for a moment, we simply stared at each other and then she whispered, "What if she needed us?"

My throat tightened. "I don't know."

That was the hardest answer I'd ever given her because there was no comfort in pretending otherwise.

Maybe Casey had needed us and maybe she'd cried for people she didn't even know were alive and maybe she'd wondered why she had been unwanted and maybe she'd spent years believing something was wrong with her and we had been somewhere else, believing she was dead.

I closed my eyes, wishing for just a moment that time could somehow be reversed. "I wish I could go back."

Victoria nodded beside me, her own expression filled with the same grief that had followed us for twenty-two years. "So do I."

"I would have searched every hospital. I would have searched every record. I would have found her."

Victoria reached up and touched my cheek, her fingers gentle against my skin. "You don't know that."

"I should have."

"Alexander..." The pain in her voice made me open my eyes, but I couldn't look away from the regret that had lived inside me for so long.

"I should have done more."

Her expression broke completely. "You did everything you knew to do."

"Maybe it wasn't enough."

"No." She shook her head, refusing to let me carry that blame alone. "It wasn't our choice."

I looked at her as she cried again, and for a moment neither of us spoke. Then her expression slowly changed, grief giving way to something quieter and more determined. "But now we have a choice."

I waited as she gathered herself. "We can choose what we do next."

I nodded, because she was right. The past was something neither of us could change, no matter how many times we wished we could, but perhaps the future was still something we could protect.

Victoria took a shaky breath before continuing. "We don't rush her. We don't overwhelm her. We don't demand anything. We let her decide what she wants."

I squeezed her hand, knowing how difficult those promises would be when all we wanted was to have our daughter back in our lives. "And if she wants nothing?"

The question visibly hurt her, but after a moment, Victoria nodded.

"Then we accept it."

I pulled her into my arms again, holding her as another sob escaped her. I rested my cheek against the top of her head and closed my eyes.

"You're going to be a good mother."

A broken sound left her as she clung to me. "I hope she lets me."

I kissed the top of her head, my own eyes burning. "I hope she does too."

We stood there for a long time, holding on to each other and to the fragile hope that had finally found its way back into our lives.

Eventually, Victoria pulled away and looked at me through tear-filled eyes. "I want to see her."

"I know."

"I mean it."

"I know."

"I want to see her face."

I smiled through my own tears. "So do I."

Her expression softened as she imagined it. "I want to know if she has your eyes."

A quiet laugh escaped me despite everything. "You've been saying she has your nose for twenty-two years."

"Because she did."

"She was three hours old."

Victoria smiled through her tears. "I knew."

I smiled back, because somehow, after twenty-two years of wondering, that tiny memory suddenly felt more precious than ever and for the first time since Michael had called, something other than grief flickered through the room something like hope.

Victoria wiped her eyes. "Do you think she'll look at us and know?"

"Know what?"

"That we're her parents."

I thought about Casey, about the woman we'd never met . Not quite true because Victoria only talked to her for a few minutes. We don't know her. I thought about the little girl we had loved before we knew how much life could hurt.

"I don't know." I paused. "But I don't think she has to know immediately."

Victoria nodded. "We'll give her time."

"Yes."

She looked at the envelope again. "Maybe I'll give her this when we're ready."

"Maybe."

She picked it up carefully and then held it against her heart. "She needs to know she was loved."

My chest tightened. "She will."

Victoria looked at me. "Even if she hates us?"

"Even then."

She nodded. "Even if she doesn't believe us?"

"Even then."

"Even if she doesn't want to call me Mom?"

"Even then."

A tiny smile appeared through her tears. "You're very sure."

"About one thing."

"What?"

I looked at the envelope in her hands. "She deserves to know the truth."

Victoria nodded. "Yes."

Outside, the evening light faded over the city. Twenty-two years ago, we'd watched the sun set from a hospital window while believing our daughter had been taken from us forever.

Tonight, for the first time, the same darkness felt different, not empty and not final. There was someone out there, our daughter, alive.

Twenty-two years old.

Somewhere, Casey was living her life, completely unaware that two people were sitting in a quiet room crying because they had finally learned the truth.

I walked toward the cabinet where we'd kept the few things we'd never been able to throw away. A tiny hospital bracelet, a photograph and a knitted blanket. Memories of a child we'd believed we'd never see again.

I opened the drawer and the photograph was exactly where I'd left it. I picked it up and Victoria came to stand beside me. We looked down at the tiny face captured in that photograph. Our little girl, our daughter.

Victoria reached for my hand. "She grew up."

I swallowed hard. "She did."

Her fingers tightened around mine. "And she's still here."

I looked at the photograph again. For twenty-two years, I'd looked at that picture and seen a child I'd lost. Tonight, I saw something different. I saw the beginning of Casey.I placed the photograph gently back inside the drawer and then I turned to Victoria. "We're going to meet our daughter."

She broke down again and so did I but this time, beneath the tears, there was something neither of us had allowed ourselves to feel in twenty-two years.

Hope and when Victoria whispered the words that neither of us had dared say until now, I finally let myself believe them.

"Our daughter is alive."