Chapter 2 - THE GIRL UNDER THE OAK TREERebecca refused to tell me where Lena was.
Not that morning.
Not at lunch.
Not even after I threatened to fire her.
That was when I realized how badly I'd changed.
I had become a man who believed money could force answers out of people.
Rebecca simply looked at me and said, “Then fire me.”
I stared at her.
“You aren't afraid of losing your job?”
“I've been afraid of many things, Mr. Caldwell. Losing this job isn't one of them.”
She took Sammy's hand.
Then she walked away.
For the first time in months, I felt ashamed of myself.
That night, I couldn't sleep.
I rolled my wheelchair toward the library and opened an old wooden cabinet.
There was a box at the back.
I hadn't touched it in nineteen years.
Inside were three things.
A faded photograph.
A blue ribbon.
And a paper crane.
I picked up the photograph.
Two teenagers stood beneath an enormous oak tree.
The boy was seventeen-year-old me.
The girl beside him had dark hair, freckles across her nose, and a smile that made the entire picture look brighter.
Lena.
I remembered the day the photograph had been taken.
We had been sitting beneath the tree after swimming in the lake.
She'd been wearing that blue ribbon around her wrist.
“You'll forget me when you become rich,” she'd teased.
“I'll never become rich.”
“You're already arrogant enough.”
“I'll remember you forever.”
She'd looked at me for a long moment.
Then she said, “Promise?”
I promised.
The next morning, my father told me her family had moved.
No explanation.
No goodbye.
I ran to the lake house.
The Hart family's cottage was empty.
The windows were boarded.
The mailbox had been removed.
I waited three days.
Lena never came.
Years later, I discovered the truth about my father's version of the story.
He had told me Lena's father stole money from our family business.
I believed him.
Now, twenty years later, something about that accusation suddenly felt wrong.
I called my attorney.
“Find every document connected to the Hart family.”
He hesitated.
“That was nearly two decades ago.”
“Then search harder.”
By evening, he called back.
“There was a civil dispute involving a former Caldwell employee named Thomas Hart.”
“Lena's father?”
“Yes.”
“What happened?”
“He was accused of misappropriating company funds.”
“Was he convicted?”
A pause.
“No.”
I closed my eyes.
“What?”
“The case was dropped.”
“Why?”
“We're still looking.”
My pulse quickened.
Then my phone rang.
Rebecca.
“Mr. Caldwell?”
“Yes.”
“I think you deserve to know something.”
“What?”
“My sister never forgot you.”
I stopped breathing.
“She didn't?”
“No.”
“Where is she?”
“She lives in Chicago.”
My heart hammered.
“Give me her address.”
Silence.
Then Rebecca said, “She won't come if you approach her as Ethan Caldwell.”
“Why?”
“Because she doesn't know what kind of man you became.”
The words hurt because they were true.
I asked quietly, “What does she think happened to me?”
Rebecca sighed.
“She thinks you stopped looking.”
I stared at the photograph on my desk.
“I did look.”
“Not long enough.”
Then the line went dead.
The following afternoon, Rebecca placed an envelope on my desk.
Inside was a single photograph.
Lena.
Older now.
Thirty-seven.
Her dark hair fell to her shoulders.
She was standing outside a small bookstore on a snowy Chicago street.
She was smiling at someone outside the frame.
I stared at her face for nearly a minute.
She hadn't become someone else.
She had simply grown into the woman I had always known was hidden inside the girl beneath the oak tree.
On the back of the photograph was an address.
And beneath it, handwritten in blue ink:
She deserves to know the truth before she knows you.
For the first time since my accident, I felt something stronger than despair.
Fear.
I was terrified of seeing her.
Because if Lena looked at me and saw only the arrogant seventeen-year-old who had failed to find her, I didn't know if I could survive that.
The next morning, I asked my driver to take me to the bookstore.
I didn't know yet that Lena had already been watching my house from across the street.
May you like
And she knew something I didn't.
My accident hadn't been an accident.
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