The Man Who Forgot

The first time Sebastian Wolfe saw our daughter, he dropped a five-million-dollar check on my kitchen counter and asked if I'd marry him again.

But I'm getting ahead of myself. Let me start where it actually started, three years and one lifetime ago, when I was twenty-five and stupid enough to sign my name on a dotted line for a man I'd met exactly twice.

---

The interview room at Wolfe Industries smelled like money. Not the fake-leather-and-wood-paneling money of a mid-tier law firm. Real money. The kind that came with a view of the entire Chicago skyline and a glass desk that probably cost more than my mother's house.

I'd been sitting in the leather chair for nineteen minutes. I knew because I kept looking at the antique clock on the wall. Tick. Tick. Tick. Each second was a second closer to my mother's next chemo appointment, which I couldn't afford, because I'd already maxed out every credit card I owned and borrowed against the house my grandmother left me.

The door opened.

He didn't walk in. He arrived. There was a difference. Sebastian Wolfe moved like the building belonged to him, because it did. Tall, dark-haired, gray eyes that looked like they'd been designed in a lab to make CFOs cry. He was wearing a suit that probably cost more than my car, if I had a car, which I didn't.

"You must be Vivian," he said, in a voice that made the interview feel like an inconvenience.

"That's me." I stood. Stuck out my hand. He looked at it for half a second too long before shaking it. His hand was warm and dry and didn't linger. "Thanks for seeing me."

"I didn't see you. My assistant did." He sat behind the glass desk. Gestured at the chair. "She said you were the top candidate. She also said you understood the terms."

"I read the contract."

"Three times?"

"Once was enough. But I read it twice more, because five million dollars is a lot of money to be wrong about."

Something flickered across his face. It might have been respect. It might have been indigestion. Hard to tell with him. "You understand what this is."

"A business arrangement." I kept my voice flat. Steady. "One year of marriage, on paper. You get the inheritance from your grandfather's trust, which requires you to be married by your thirty-second birthday. I get paid in quarterly installments. No obligations outside of public appearances. Clean break at the end of twelve months. I disappear, you never see me again."

"Correct."

"I have one question."

"Ask."

I took a breath. "Why me?"

He didn't hesitate. "Because you don't want anything from me."

That was the honest answer. I was a stranger, a nobody, and he needed a stranger-nobody who'd take the money and go away. I could do that. I was already good at going away. I'd been doing it my whole life.

"Three things," I said, even though I hadn't planned to say any of this. "First, the medical expenses you mentioned in the appendix — I need them covered up front. My mother doesn't have nine months to wait for quarterly payments. Second, I want a separate apartment. I don't live with you. Third, you never tell anyone my name is anything other than Vivian Wolfe. After twelve months, I'm Vivian Castellano again. You never heard of me."

He blinked.

Then he smiled. Just once. Just barely. "Those are not unreasonable terms."

"I'm a reasonable person."

"You're a person who negotiated in the first five minutes. That's not common." He opened a drawer. Pulled out a pen. Slid the contract across the desk. "Initial here, here, and here. Sign at the bottom. Your mother gets her first round of treatment by Friday."

I picked up the pen.

I signed my name.

---

Six months into the marriage, we attended forty-seven public events together. I wore dresses that cost more than my graduate tuition. I learned to smile in three different ways for three different kinds of cameras. I figured out which fork to use at dinners where the entrée cost more than my rent.

Sebastian was always polite. Always distant. Always on his phone, or talking to someone more important than me, or leaving early because of "work," which I later learned was code for everything except work.

We never touched. Not once. Not a hand on my back walking through a door. Not a brush of shoulders in a car. Not even a casual side-hug for the cameras. I got good at angling myself so the photographers could crop us close without actually making contact.

I told myself I didn't mind. The money was real. My mother was alive because of it. The apartment he paid for was the nicest place I'd ever lived. I had a closet full of designer clothes I'd never wear again after this was over.

But sometimes, at the events, when he was talking to investors and I was standing three feet away being decorative, I'd catch him looking at me. Just for a second. Just long enough to wonder if he was looking at me at all, or just confirming I was still there.

I never asked.

The terms of the contract were clear. We were strangers. We were going to stay strangers. After twelve months, I'd be a memory he never had, and he'd be a line item in my tax return.

---

Nine months in, my mother died.

It was a Tuesday. She died in the hospital with the window facing the lake, the room I'd paid for with the second quarterly payment. I was holding her hand when her breathing stopped. I was holding her hand for forty-five minutes after her breathing stopped, because I couldn't make my fingers let go.

I called Sebastian at 6:47 a.m. He picked up on the second ring. For the first time in nine months, his voice sounded human. "Vivian. What's wrong."

"She's gone."

Silence on the other end. Three seconds. Five. Seven.

"I'll send the car," he said. "Where are you."

"Northwestern Memorial. Seventh floor."

"I'll be there in twenty minutes."

He made it in fifteen.

He didn't say anything when he walked into the hospital room. He just stood next to me, close enough that our shoulders almost touched, and waited for me to be ready to leave.

I didn't cry. Not there. Not in front of him. I cried in the car, and he didn't look at me, and the driver didn't look at me, and the privacy screen was up, and I was grateful for every inch of that privacy screen.

He came to the funeral. He stood in the back. He didn't pretend to be my husband. He was just a man in a black suit, paying his respects to a woman he'd never met.

After the service, he handed me an envelope. Inside was a check. One million dollars, made out to a college fund in my mother's name. The kind of gesture that would have looked performative if anyone else had done it. From him, it looked like the most expensive apology for nothing.

"What's this for," I said.

"Your mother was important to you. This is for her."

"She would have hated the idea of me taking money for her."

"Your mother would have wanted you to be okay."

That was the closest he ever came to knowing me. I think that's also the closest he ever came to wanting to.

---

Eleven months in, I found out I was pregnant.

I didn't tell him.

I told myself it was because the contract had a non-disclosure clause. I told myself it was because I didn't need anything else from him. I told myself it was because we'd agreed this was a clean break and a baby was not part of the clean break.

But the truth was, I was afraid. Afraid that he'd ask me to terminate. Afraid that he'd want to keep the baby and raise it with his new wife, whoever that turned out to be. Afraid that he'd offer me more money, and that I'd take it, and that I'd hate myself for the rest of my life.

I told myself I had three more months. I had time. I had time to figure it out.

Then, on our first anniversary, I woke up in the apartment he'd paid for and there was a note on the kitchen counter.

Vivian —

Something happened. I had to leave. I'm sorry.

The remainder of your payment has been wired to the account on file. The apartment is yours for the next twelve months. After that, it's yours to keep or sell.

Don't look for me. It will be easier if you don't.

— Sebastian

He was gone. No forwarding address. No new phone number. No explanation. Just gone, like he'd never existed, like the year we'd spent as strangers was a fever dream, like the four hundred and seventy-three public events and the seven private conversations and the one moment in the car when I cried and he didn't look at me had all been erased.

I packed a bag that afternoon. I moved out of the apartment that night. I put the money in a trust for the baby I was four months pregnant with, and I went back to my grandmother's house, which was too big for one person and would, in eight months, be exactly the right size for two.

I didn't look for him.

I raised our daughter alone. I named her Lily, after my mother. I cut my hair short so I looked more like the kind of person who could do single motherhood and a full-time job and not cry in the supply closet at work. I figured it out. I always figured it out.

For three years, I figured it out.

And then, on a Wednesday in October, when I was making Lily's lunch and the kitchen smelled like peanut butter and jelly and the only thing I was worried about was whether she'd eat the apple slices or trade them for goldfish crackers at daycare, the doorbell rang.

I opened the door.

Sebastian Wolfe was standing on my porch.

He looked exactly the same and completely different. Same gray eyes. Same dark hair. But there was something cracked around the edges, like a window that had been hit but hadn't shattered yet. He was wearing a coat that cost more than my car (which I still didn't have) and holding a paper bag from a bakery I couldn't afford, and his hands were shaking.

"Vivian," he said.

My heart stopped. Just for a second. Just long enough to feel it.

"What are you doing here."

"I need to talk to you."

"We're done talking. We were done talking three years ago, the day you left a note on a counter and disappeared."

"I know." He looked at me. Looked at the door frame. Looked at the house behind me, like he was trying to read the story of my life from the paint color. "I know we were. But something happened. Something I need to tell you. And I need to ask you something. And I—"

A small voice from behind me. "Mommy, who's at the door?"

I felt the blood drain from my face.

Lily was standing behind my leg, holding her stuffed elephant, looking up at Sebastian with my mother's eyes and his chin.

Sebastian looked down at her.

His face went completely white.

"Whose child is that," he whispered.

I didn't answer.

I closed the door.

Through the wood, I could hear him breathing. I could hear him not leaving.

I picked up Lily. I walked to the kitchen. I finished making her lunch, because the world didn't stop because the man I'd signed a contract to marry three years ago had just seen his daughter for the first time.

I put the apple slices in the bag.

I put the goldfish crackers in the bag.

I zipped the bag.

I sat down at the kitchen table.

And I waited for him to knock again.

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