Chapter 4 - TWENTY-SIX YEARS OF RETURNED LETTERS
There were fourteen letters.
Damian counted them three times.
Mabel had spread them across her kitchen table beneath the weak yellow light.
All were addressed to him.
All were written between the ages of eighteen and twenty-one.
None had reached him.
Some had been opened.
Others remained sealed.
The first began:
Damian, I know Houston is probably overwhelming, but I’m proud of you.
The second:
I got accepted to the accounting program.
The fifth:
Your father came by today. He said you’re building a new life and that I should let you.
The seventh:
I don’t believe him.
The ninth:
I called the number you gave me. They said it had been disconnected.
The twelfth:
I’m going to stop writing because every letter feels more humiliating than the last.
The fourteenth contained only one paragraph.
I still love you, but I refuse to spend my life begging someone to remember me.
Damian sat at the table unable to move.
For twenty-six years he had remembered Mabel as the girl who stopped writing.
She had remembered him as the boy who never answered.
Neither version had been true.
“Where was the box?” he asked.
“Under the cottage.”
“What?”
Mabel explained.
After the break-in, she had searched the crawlspace to see whether anything had been disturbed.
Behind one support beam was a weatherproof metal container.
Inside were the letters.
And an old Vance family photograph.
Damian picked up the photograph.
His parents.
Arthur and Evelyn.
Graham.
Damian at seventeen.
On the back, in his mother’s handwriting:
If Damian ever comes back for Mabel, tell him the truth.
His hands started shaking.
“My mother knew.”
Mabel sat opposite him.
“You don’t know that.”
“I know her handwriting.”
“I mean you don’t know what she knew.”
Damian stared at Evelyn’s words.
His mother had died six years earlier after a long battle with cancer.
She had been the only person in his family he never doubted.
Until now.
He closed his eyes.
Mabel said quietly:
“I hated you.”
He opened them.
“For years.”
“I deserved some of it.”
“Not the letters.”
“No.”
“But the night four years ago?”
He looked away.
“That was me.”
“Yes.”
“I ran.”
“Yes.”
“I was scared.”
Mabel laughed softly.
“So was I.”
Damian forced himself to look at her.
“I was forty years old and still behaved like the eighteen-year-old kid who thought leaving first meant nobody could abandon him.”
Mabel’s expression softened for half a second.
Then Lily appeared at the kitchen doorway.
“Mommy, I’m thirsty.”
Mabel stood immediately.
Damian watched her pour water into a plastic cup.
Such a small thing.
Such an ordinary thing.
And he had missed three years of it.
Lily looked at him.
“Are you sad?”
Damian swallowed.
“A little.”
She considered that.
Then held out her stuffed rabbit.
“You can hold Bunny.”
His throat closed.
Mabel looked away.
Damian took the rabbit carefully.
“Thank you.”
Lily climbed onto the chair beside him.
She studied his face with those green eyes.
Then touched his eyebrow.
“You look like me.”
Mabel froze at the sink.
Damian could barely breathe.
“Maybe I do.”
The following morning, with Mabel’s permission, they arranged a legal paternity test.
Damian did not rush her.
Did not pressure her.
He signed every consent form.
Then waited.
The results arrived forty-eight hours later.
Probability of paternity:
99.9997%.
Damian read the number silently.
Mabel stood beside him.
Neither celebrated.
It was too complicated for celebration.
Damian crouched beside Lily.
She was coloring a horse purple.
He had rehearsed a dozen sentences.
None worked.
So he simply asked:
“Can I keep visiting you?”
Lily shrugged.
“If you bring pancakes.”
Mabel laughed unexpectedly.
The sound almost broke him.
Then Damian’s phone rang.
Rebecca.
He answered.
“I found something in the accounting export.”
“What?”
“Your father wasn’t the only person authorizing the ghost-company transactions.”
Damian stood.
“Who else?”
Rebecca hesitated.
“Your mother.”
His stomach dropped.
“No.”
“I have Evelyn Vance’s digital approvals on seventeen payments.”
Damian looked at the photograph on the table.
If Damian ever comes back for Mabel, tell him the truth.
Rebecca continued:
“And there’s one payment dated twenty-six years ago.”
“How much?”
“Fifty thousand dollars.”
“To who?”
Paper moved on Rebecca’s side.
Then she answered:
“A private investigator.”
Damian stopped breathing.
“What was he hired to investigate?”
May you like
Rebecca’s voice became quieter.
“Mabel Sterling.”
