Lila walked down an empty country road on a rainy night, with just her umbrella to protect herself from the pouring rain. She was 25 years old, a gentle schoolteacher on her way home from another long day.

There was a slight sob, breaking through the patter of rain. By the roadside was a little boy, no more than seven perhaps, but already drenched and crying. He held a ragged backpack and appeared lost and fearful.

Lila knelt beside him. “What’s your name, sweetheart?” she asked softly. “T-Tommy,” he stammered, shivering. He didn’t know his way home or who he belonged to.

Lila’s heart ached. She couldn’t leave him alone. She took his hand, promising to help him locate his family, and ushered him back to her small cottage.

Days passed and then weeks, but no one returned to claim Tommy. Lila called the police, looked at missing children reports, and posted fliers, but there was no trace.

Tommy’s memories were hazy—he knew there had been a big house and a perpetually busy man, but nothing that could be built on. Breezy couldn’t stomach the thought of him in foster care, so she took over as his guardian.

She provided him with a warm bed, read to him, and taught him how to laugh again. In three years, Tommy had become a son to her, and she delighted in his bright eyes and endless curiosity.

Lila’s life was also radically altered in other ways. At a charity event in town, she’d met one Ethan Caldwell, charming billionaire and owner of half the city’s skyline. And she was drawn to his warm smile and unassuming confidence.

They began dating, and Ethan was taken with Lila’s generosity and strength. “He loved Tommy, too; he would always give him little presents—a model car or a book about stars.

Tommy would glow, referring to Ethan as “the cool guy.” When Ethan proposed to Lila, she felt that she must be dreaming, gazing at his glittering eyes as a ring was slipped onto her finger.

The engagement party was held at his vast mansion, which left one feeling as if one were in a castle from a fairy tale.

Lila had observed Tommy acting funny as the party drew near. He’d go silent and all wide-eyed with a nervous gaze while they were on a visit, staring at Ethan’s mansion.

“Sounds like I’ve been here before,” he whispered once, though when Lila asked him, he shook his head, uncertain. Lila chalked it up to nerves.

Posh chandeliers and marble floors, a far cry from their cozy cottage. She wasn’t trying to pressure Tommy, but the seed of a doubt had taken root in her mind. Why had the mansion looked familiar to him?

The night came for the engagement party, the mansion bright with lights and laughter. Lila was in a flowy dress, heart pounding with excitement. Tommy grasped her side, wearing a little suit, his face pale.

Guests noshed, lifting toasts to Lila and Ethan’s future. But as Ethan grabbed a glass for a toast, a woman in a chic black dress headed towards Lila, her smile incisive.

“You don’t know everything about your fiancé,” she said mysteriously, eyeing Tommy. Lila’s stomach twisted. Without waiting for an answer, the woman disappeared into the crowd. Lila looked around the hall, becoming a little nervous. Who was she, and what did she have to say?

Tommy wandered off during the party to a hallway full of family photos. Lila discovered him looking at a sepia photograph of a man with an infant. “That’s me,” said Tommy, tremulous.

Lila’s heart stopped. The person in the photograph was Ethan, only younger-looking and recognizable. Her brain whirred—how was this possible?

She embraced Tommy and vowed to figure it out. When she cornered Ethan privately, he went white in the face. “Lila, I have something to tell you,” he said in a whisper. The music from the party grew faint as her world spun.

Ethan took Lila to a secluded study, holding Tommy’s hand. In a trembling voice, he told them, then added that three years ago, he had been married to a woman called Vanessa, the woman in black.

They later had a son, Thomas, but their marriage ended in divorce. Vanessa took Thomas and fled after a nasty fight, and she cut off all contact with Ethan.

He’d hired detectives to search for his son, but they turned up nothing. When he encountered Lila, for example, he hadn’t a clue that she was Tommy’s Thomas—the boy he’d lost. “I didn’t know,” Ethan told him, tears in his eyes. “I swear, Lila, I didn’t know any of that.”

Lila’s heart pounded. She glanced at Tommy, who was watching Ethan with confusion but hope. The puzzle pieces were all there—Tommy’s hazy memories of a big house and a busy man.

Vanessa’s oblique remarks at the party were a taunt, a means to rattle around in the past. The treachery Lila felt was distinctly not Ethan’s betrayal but the secrets that had lurked in their lives.

She needed to think, figure out what she wanted to do about this—and what it meant for her, for Tommy, and for Ethan.

She grabbed Tommy’s hand and walked out of the study, the party noise in the distance. Outside, under the stars, she held him tight, whispering, “We’ll figure this out together.”

Lila held Tommy’s tiny hand in hers the next morning as they sat in their cottage. Ethan rang and pleaded with her to allow for distance, but wanted to be in Tommy’s life.

Lila didn’t have all the answers, but she felt that Tommy had a right to know his father. She knew that Vanessa’s homecoming would bring renewed questioning—why had she not turned in Tommy?

What did she want now? Lila was bound to Tommy by a mystery that filled her with sorrow, but she loved him as much as ever. She had raised him in uncertainty, and she would protect him through this as well.

Whispers began circulating in the village about the drama at the mansion. Lila looked the other way, at Tommy’s smile when he played in the yard.

She didn’t know whether she would marry Ethan or what Vanessa’s shtick was going to be, but there was one thing that Claire knew for sure: Tommy was family, like it or not.

Lila felt a quiet strength as she watched him chase after a butterfly, and it made her happy to feel like the day they’d met. The path ahead was unknowable, but she would travel it bravely, for Tommy and also for herself.