The Little Girl Wore His Missing Pendant—Then Called Him Daddy
The little girl was clutching a necklace Jace Mercer had made for a woman who had disappeared six years ago.
There should have been only two pendants in the world.
One belonged to him.
The other had vanished with the woman he was supposed to marry.
Rain turned the sidewalks of downtown Chicago into black mirrors, breaking every streetlight into trembling shards of gold.
Jace had just left a late meeting at the children’s hospital when he saw them across the street.
A woman sat against a freezing stone wall beneath the shadow of a closed office building.
She wore an oversized cream sweater soaked dark at the shoulders.
Her arms were locked around a sleeping little girl in a dusty rose dress.
Neither of them had an umbrella.
Neither of them looked like they had anywhere to go.
Jace almost kept walking.
For years, he had trained himself not to stare at people who reminded him of the life he had lost.
Then the little girl shifted in the woman’s lap.
Her fingers loosened.
A small silver pendant slipped into view.
A crescent moon.
Jace stopped so abruptly that the man behind him nearly crashed into his shoulder.
His hand moved instinctively toward the pendant hidden beneath his black shirt.
The matching piece suddenly felt hot against his skin.
He had designed the pair himself six years earlier.
A moon for him.
A star for the woman he had planned to marry.
No copies had ever been made.
The woman against the wall slowly raised her face.
Rain clung to her lashes.
Her eyes were swollen from crying.
But Jace recognized them instantly.
His breath disappeared.
“Evelyn?”
Her entire body went rigid.
The little girl stirred between them.
May you like
Then Evelyn looked down at the crescent moon in her daughter’s hand and whispered the one sentence Jace was not prepared to hear.
“You were never supposed to find us.”
