Prologue
Sarah Miller and Andrew Morris stared at the company's letterhead, their hearts pounding in disbelief. The name at the top — Simon Clark — seemed to cast a long shadow over the sterile light of the interview room.
It couldn't be, they thought. Not the boy they had taunted in the echoing corridors of high school, the boy without a family, passed between foster homes with nothing but a battered satchel and a reputation for brilliance that made him a target.
They remembered the whispered jokes, the cruel laughter and the relentless way that they had tried to remind him he was a nobody—except, of course, for his intelligence. They also remembered the day he vanished; his desk left bare and his name quickly erased from memory as if he had never existed at all.
Now here he was, the owner of the company they'd both applied to, his name written large in sharp, black ink—an undeniable fact. The irony stung, leaving them to wonder if their applications would survive his scrutiny, if they could work for someone who they had despised for no reason beyond his being lost and alone, yet outshining them all.
Seventeen floors above the city, Simon Clark stood at his office window, watching the clouds drift over London's restless skyline. The world seemed vast and impersonal, yet Simon's thoughts were tethered to the simplest, rawest hope: to find the woman who had given him life and then, with a breaking heart, let him go.
He turned to the file resting on his glass desk. After years of searching, his private investigator had finally traced the man who had found him—abandoned at a Fulham bus stop as dawn crept into the city. The man had called the authorities but kept a single, folded note, faded by time and trembling hands.
Simon unfolded the letter. His eyes traced the words as if he might find in them the beginning of everything that he had become.
Dear Simon,
I am truly sorry and very saddened to have abandoned you to keep you safe. I am not sure what fate has in store for me, but if you ever want to find me, my full name is Phoebe Mukasa. I am an immigrant from Uganda who was brought here with a promise of better prospects, but it turned out to be my nightmare.
She had written her date of birth and the address she'd once lived at. The ink was a fragile bridge to a past that Simon had often imagined, but never touched.
Relief washed over him, gentle and unexpected. In those lines, Simon found not abandonment, but rather a sacrifice—proof that his mother had chosen love in the only way she could. Perhaps, at last, he could begin to forgive the world, and himself, for the way his story had begun.