21. Wade
— ? —
Wade
Luisa’s nod was the smallest movement, a tiny dip of her chin, almost imperceptible, but it hit me like a tidal wave.
Yes.
She was saying yes.
I crouched down to Poppy’s level. She was looking up at me with those eyes, my eyes, the same color blue that had stared back at me from mirrors my entire life. Four years old today. All four of them missed.
“Yes,” I said. My voice came out rough. “I’m your dad.”
Poppy tilted her head. “Why didn’t you say so before?”
“Because I got lost for a while.” I swallowed hard. “Dads aren’t supposed to get lost. And I’m sorry. I’m so sorry, Poppy. But I’m not lost anymore. I found my way back.”
She considered this with the gravity of a Supreme Court justice.
“Okay,” she said finally. “Do you like dollhouses?”
I laughed, a wet, broken sound. “I love dollhouses.”
“Good. Because this one needs a lot of work. The kitchen is all wrong.”
“Show me what’s wrong with it.”
She grabbed my hand and pulled me toward her new treasure, already explaining that the tiny stove needed to be on the other side and the table was facing the wrong direction. I followed her lead, my vision blurry, my chest so full it hurt.
When I looked up, Luisa was standing at the edge of the yard, one hand pressed against her mouth. Her eyes were wet.
I wanted to go to her. Hold her. Tell her everything.
But this moment belonged to Poppy.
“See?” My daughter pointed at the miniature dining room. “The chairs don’t match.”
“That’s a serious problem.”
“I know. We need to fix it.”
“We will. We’ll fix everything.”
The party continued, children played, adults chatted.
Poppy kept me by the dollhouse for the next hour, issuing instructions and critiques with the confidence of a tiny general.
By the time the guests started leaving, I had learned that the doll family’s last name was Sparklebottom, the father doll had anger issues that were being addressed through therapy, and the smallest doll was actually a secret dragon in disguise.
“Like me,” Poppy explained.
“You’re a secret dragon?”
“DUH.”
At some point Poppy discovered a sheet of butterfly stickers in her pile of party favors and decided my forearms were the superior canvas.
She pressed them over my tattoos one by one, tongue poking out in concentration, a glittery purple butterfly directly over the coordinates, a green one over some inked lines she declared “boring,” a lopsided orange one covering half of a date I’d never explained.
“There,” she announced, patting my arm. “Now they’re pretty.”
“They were pretty before.”
“Now they’re PRETTIER. You can keep them forever.”
“I intend to.” I meant it, too. I wore those stickers until they finally surrendered in the shower three days later, and I mourned them.
Luisa didn’t talk about my confession. She smiled at the other parents, thanked them for coming, accepted compliments on the party. But I caught her watching me and Poppy with an unguarded look, wonder, maybe. Or sorrow. Or both.
By 5 p.m., everyone had gone. Poppy was sprawled on the couch inside, exhausted from excitement, watching a movie about a princess who was also a dragon. (Her choice, obviously.)
I helped Luisa clean up the backyard. We worked in silence, gathering streamers and deflated balloons, folding chairs and stacking plates. The evening light turned everything golden.
“Thank you,” she said finally.
I looked up from the garbage bag I was filling. “For what?”
“For what you said to her. About being lost.”
“It was the truth.”
“I know.” She paused, a paper plate in her hand. “I know it was.”
She didn’t say anything else. Didn’t invite me to stay for dinner. But when I left, she stood on the porch and watched me drive away, and she was still smiling.
Progress.
It felt like progress.
I drove to the Henley place through the fading light, my mind full of Poppy’s face and Luisa’s almost-smile and the weight of everything I still hadn’t told them. The house looked good, solid and welcoming, nothing like the disaster I’d bought six months ago.
I’d built this with my own hands. For them.
Even if they never lived here, I’d built it for them.
I was making dinner when my phone started blowing up.
One alert, then another, then a dozen. Then my phone was vibrating so continuously it nearly rattled off the counter.
I grabbed it.
BILLIONAIRE HEIR WADE BUCKLEY SPOTTED IN SMALL MAINE TOWN
EXCLUSIVE: BUCKLEY FAMILY BLACK SHEEP HAS SECRET DAUGHTER
WHERE IS WADE BUCKLEY NOW? SMALL TOWN SOURCES REVEAL ALL
My stomach dropped.
I scrolled through the alerts, my hands growing colder with each headline.
Someone had posted a photo, the picture from Poppy’s party, the one Birdie had taken of the three of us.
Poppy in her birthday crown. Luisa with frosting on her sleeve.
Me, looking at them both like they were the only things in the universe.
The photo had gone viral.
Every major news outlet had picked it up. The comment sections were exploding with speculation. Who was the woman? Was that his daughter? Where had he been hiding? Was this connected to his father’s trial?
My phone rang. An unknown number. Then another, and another.
Reporters. They’d found my number somehow. Of course they had.
I silenced the phone and sat down at my kitchen table, trying to think through the panic.
Luisa was going to see this. If she hadn’t already. The whole town was going to see it. And when they did, they were going to have questions, questions about my family, my past, the trial that had consumed my life for two years.
Questions I wasn’t ready to answer.
But I couldn’t let the press control this narrative. I couldn’t let them tell a story that might hurt Luisa and Poppy. I needed to get ahead of it.
I needed to go on the record.
I made one phone call, not to Luisa, not yet; I wasn’t sure she’d believe me without proof, but to my lawyer, who had been begging me to do a single controlled interview since the trial ended.
“Get me on a talk show,” I said. “Tomorrow. Wherever you can book.”
“Wade, are you sure? The press circus-”
“I’m sure. One interview. My terms. And make sure they know I won’t discuss anything I don’t want to discuss.”
“I’ll make some calls.”
I hung up and stared at my phone for a long moment.
Then I started composing a text to Luisa that I ultimately deleted. Five different versions, all wrong. I didn’t know how to explain that I was about to go on national television without telling her first. Didn’t know where I’d even start.
So I didn’t send anything.
I just got in the car at 4 a.m. and drove.
The studio was in Portland, a local affiliate that was thrilled to land the first post-trial interview with Wade Buckley, even on short notice. My lawyer met me there, running through the ground rules one more time while someone powdered my face and adjusted the lighting.
“Remember,” she said. “You don’t have to answer anything you don’t want to answer. If they push on the financial details, redirect. If they mention your father’s other victims-”
“I know what I’m doing.”
“Wade-”
“I know what I’m doing.”
The host was a woman in her fifties, professional and sharp-eyed, the kind of journalist who had built her career on making people uncomfortable. I shook her hand and sat in the chair across from her, the cameras already rolling.
“Mr. Buckley,” she began. “Thank you for joining us.”
“Thank you for having me.”
“This is your first public appearance since your father’s trial concluded six months ago. Why now? What made you decide to speak?”
I breathed in, slow.
“Because the press found me,” I said simply. “And when the press finds you, they tell whatever story they want to tell. I wanted to tell my own story.”
“And what is that story?”
“That I’m trying to rebuild my life. In a small town where no one knew who I was, or so I thought. I was trying to be anonymous. To start over.”
“The photo that went viral yesterday shows you with a woman and a young girl. Are they part of this new life you’re building?”
My teeth set. “I’m not going to discuss them specifically. They didn’t ask for this attention, and I won’t subject them to it. But yes. I’m trying to earn back my family’s trust.”
“‘Earn back’? Does that mean you did something to lose it?”
Here it was. The moment I’d been dreading and preparing for in equal measure.
“My father was guilty of many things,” I said carefully. “Financial crimes, fraud, manipulation. But he was also guilty of something more personal, of using his influence to control the people around him. Including me.”
“Can you elaborate?”
“He made me leave my wife.” The words came out harder than I intended. “Not directly. He didn’t hold a gun to my head. But he engineered a situation where I thought I had no choice. He convinced me that staying with her would put her in danger.”
“Danger from what?”
“From him. From the investigation. From the entire house of cards that was about to collapse.” I leaned forward. “I made the worst decision of my life because I believed I was protecting her. And by the time I realized I was wrong, it was too late.”
“You’re saying your father deliberately destroyed your marriage?”
“I’m saying he manipulated me into destroying it myself. Which is worse, in some ways. Because I have to live with that choice.”
The host studied me for a moment.
“And now? What are you hoping to accomplish with this interview?”
“I’m going to the press now only to ask them to kindly leave me alone.” I looked directly into the camera. “While I try to earn back my family’s trust and love. That’s all I want. That’s all I’m asking. Just… give us space.”
“Before I let you go.” She studied me, plainly deciding whether to push. She pushed. “The woman in that photograph. The internet has already decided she’s the love of your life. Are they right?”
There it was. The one line I’d sworn I’d never cross. I’d promised, her, myself, the empty half-finished rooms of that house, that whatever else I did, I’d never put her in a headline. Her privacy was the last clean thing I still had to give her.
And under those lights, I finally understood that keeping her a secret had never really been about protecting her.
It had been about protecting me. About keeping the safe version of the apology, the one where I never had to say the terrifying thing out loud in a place that would hold me to it forever.
I was done being a coward.
“Her name is Luisa.” My voice didn’t shake. “And yes. She’s the love of my life. She has been since she flipped me flat onto my back on a cobblestone street twelve years ago because she was certain I was mugging her.”
The host’s eyebrows climbed. I kept going.
“I chose my father’s approval over her once. I chose a name and a fortune and a legacy over the only person who ever loved me when I had nothing to offer but myself. I will regret that every single day for the rest of my life.”
“So no. I’m not going to sit here and call her ‘the woman in the photograph’ to keep her comfortable and keep myself safe. Her name is Luisa Erickson. And I would burn every dollar of the Buckley fortune to the ground for one more chance to deserve her.”
I looked into the camera. Harder, this time. “The little girl stays out of this. Completely. Print her name, photograph her, put her on a single front page, and I will spend that same fortune turning your life into a legal nightmare. That is not a threat. Consider it a term and condition.”
Then, quieter. To one person, and one person only.
“Luisa. If you’re watching. I know exactly what I promised you.
I know I swore you’d never end up in the papers because of me.
I’m breaking that promise on purpose, right now, in front of the entire country, because you were never a secret to be managed.
You were the point. You were always the point. ”
For a moment, the sharp-eyed woman who had built her career on making people uncomfortable did not appear to have a follow-up.
“One more question, Mr. Buckley. About your father. Alton Buckley is currently serving twenty years in federal prison. Do you have any contact with him?”
I felt my face go cold.
“No.”
“Any plans to visit? To reconcile?”
“No.”
“Can you tell our viewers what you think of your father now, after everything that’s come to light?”
I thought about it. Thought about Alton Buckley sitting in his prison cell, still convinced he’d done nothing wrong, still spinning lies to anyone who would listen, and about my mother, who had died before she could see what her husband really was.
And about Luisa’s face on the night I’d broken her heart, and Poppy’s face yesterday when she’d asked if I was her daddy.
“I think,” I said slowly, “that he was a fucking asshole who got exactly what he deserved.”
The host blinked.
“That’s… quite a statement.”
“It’s the truth.”
We finished the interview with some softer questions, my plans for the future, my hopes for the community I’d settled in. I gave vague, careful answers. Protected Bellhaven as best I could.
When it was over, I sat in my rental car in the parking lot and stared at my phone.
Luisa hadn’t texted.
I didn’t know if she’d seen the interview. Didn’t know if she’d believe any of it if she had, or if any of this would make a difference.
But I’d done what I could.
It was the truth, all of it.
I started the car and began the long drive back to Bellhaven, back to the house I was rebuilding with my own hands, back to the woman and child I planned to spend a lifetime deserving.
I wasn’t sure Luisa would see the interview. And if she did, she probably wouldn’t believe it. She’d spent four years thinking I was a liar. One TV appearance wouldn’t change that overnight.
But I thought we were making progress. Slowly. Painfully. One supervised visit at a time.
And maybe, soon, she’d be willing to hear my whole story. The parts I still couldn’t say out loud. The real reason I’d pushed her away. The threat that had hung over her head without her ever knowing.
Maybe soon.
I hoped it would be soon.
Because the longer I waited, the harder it got to keep carrying this secret alone.