Chapter 6 - The Breadcrumb Trail
Leaving the Metropolitan Club, I didn't return to the penthouse. I couldn't face Evelyn’s cold interrogation, her legalistic pragmatism, or the sterile, echoing silence of an apartment that had never truly felt like home.
Instead, I drove my car aimlessly through the glittering Chicago streets, the neon signs of the city bleeding together into long streaks of color through the rain-spattered windshield. My mind was a hurricane of fragmented realities.
Natalie.
She was here. In Chicago. Raising twins.
My twins.
The realization hit me with the force of a freight train every time I pictured those slate-gray eyes looking out through the restaurant window. There was no denying the biological truth. Those children were born roughly four and a half years after our divorce—meaning they were conceived around late 2024 or early 2025.
If Natalie had discovered the truth about the falsified medical records... if she had somehow uncovered Victor’s plot or realized that her own body was never the problem... why hadn't she come to find me?
Because I had looked her in the eye and told her I didn't love her. Because I had treated her with freezing contempt, blamed her for a manufactured failure, and thrown her out of my life like trash. Why on earth would she ever want to see my face again, let alone tell me that she was carrying my children?
I needed to find her. Not to demand custody, not to reclaim the past, but simply to look her in the eye, ask for forgiveness, and understand how the pieces of our shattered lives had somehow found their way back into the same city.
The next morning, I didn't go to the office. I sat in my parked car outside the downtown architectural firm, ignoring Evelyn’s increasingly frantic text messages and missed calls. I opened my laptop and began digging through the digital archives of our past.
I started with our old shared cloud storage—accounts I hadn't accessed since the divorce. Buried deep within old photo directories, tax documents, and travel itineraries, I found a folder labeled Personal/Shared.
Inside were hundreds of photos from our early years together, but also a sub-folder titled Lincoln Park Townhouse - Concept.
It was an old real estate listing from late 2023—long after our divorce. Natalie had apparently tried to purchase a small, historic brick townhouse on Arlington Place in Lincoln Park. Her loan application had been denied at the time due to lack of a co-signer, but the address remained burned into the digital document.
It was a long shot. A microscopic needle in the massive haystack of a city of millions. But it was the only thread I had.
I started the engine and drove north toward Lincoln Park.
The neighborhood was a picturesque labyrinth of tree-lined streets, historic brownstones, wrought-iron fences, and boutique cafes. It was the kind of neighborhood where families walked golden retrievers in the morning and children played on manicured lawns.
I parked three blocks away from Arlington Place and started walking on foot, keeping my eyes glued to every passing stroller, every doorway, every playground.
For hours, I walked through the crisp autumn air, my breath pluming in the morning mist. My legs ached, my throat was dry, and self-doubt gnawed at my resolve with every passing minute. What was I expecting? A movie-style coincidence where I would just bump into her on a corner?
By mid-afternoon, I found myself standing outside a charming, three-story brick walk-up with ivy climbing the wrought-iron railings—the exact address from the old real estate listing.
The brass mail slot on the front door was polished to a mirror shine. A small slate planter sat beside the steps, filled with blooming white chrysanthemums.
I hesitated, my hand hovering over the iron gate. Was she even living here? Had she moved on? Was there a man sharing her life now—a man who kissed her forehead when she woke up, who played with those twins on the living room floor, who loved her the way I should have loved her all along?
The thought twisted a rusted knife in my gut. I had no right to be jealous. I had surrendered my place in her life the moment I chose Victor’s poisonous whispers over her steadfast devotion.
As I stood there wrestling with my own conscience, the front door of the brownstone clicked open.
A woman stepped out onto the porch, carrying a wicker basket filled with folded baby laundry.
She wore an oversized cream-colored knit sweater, her dark hair pulled back in a messy clip, a smudge of flour on her cheek.
May you like
Natalie.
She froze mid-step, her eyes locking onto me standing frozen at the bottom of her stairs. The wicker basket slipped from her hands, clattering loudly against the wooden porch boards, sending a cascade of tiny socks and baby blankets tumbling across the steps.
