Ryan appeared onscreen inside the garage.
He looked exhausted.
“Anna,” he began quietly, “if you’re watching this, enough time has probably passed for you to start moving on.”
My chest tightened instantly.
“I’m sorry,” he continued. “Jack and Caleb deserve something I never had the right to keep from them anymore. By the time you see this, I’ll already have taken them to their biological mother.”
The room spun around me.
Lily grabbed my arm, but I barely noticed.
Ryan looked directly into the camera.
“You probably won’t forgive me. Maybe you shouldn’t. Everything has gone beyond my control now.”
Then his expression softened.
“Tell Peanut I love her.”
The video ended.
Lily was crying openly now.
“Mom… what do we do?”
I stood so fast the bedframe creaked beneath me.
“We find out the truth.”
The next morning, we drove nearly four hours.
Andrea — Ryan’s ex-wife — answered the door.
The second she saw me, all color drained from her face.
She tried closing the door immediately.
I stopped it with my hand and held up Lily’s phone.
“Watch this.”
She barely made it halfway through the video before tears overtook her.
When it ended, she silently stepped aside and let us enter.
