Quietly. Carefully.
Archived interviews. Old regional articles. A grainy hospital mention from nearly two decades ago. A custody filing reference buried in a local Bremen news snippet.
The deeper he looked, the more the numbers lined up.
It wasn't one single revelation.
It was accumulation.
The age matched.
The timeline matched.
And once he saw it, he couldn't unsee it.
He never told Lexi.
He never confronted Jane.
Because by then, he had already decided—years earlier—that reopening that wound would only cause damage. If Jane had chosen to close that chapter, he would let her.
He told himself it was settled.
That she had moved on.
That he had moved on.
But tonight—watching her turn around in that parking lot, watching her walk back toward the stadium instead of toward their car—
He knew she hadn't moved on.
She had been holding her breath for sixteen years.
And now the air had run out.
Roger leaned back slowly against the headboard.
He wasn't angry.
