Chapter 3 - THE CHILD I NEVER KNEW EXISTED
I sat down in the snow.
The officer asked if I was okay.
I wasn’t.
Rachel stayed on the phone.
“What does that mean?”
“I don’t know.”
“She miscarried?”
“She never told me.”
I remembered the first year of our relationship.
Emma had been withdrawn for a month.
Said she had the flu.
Canceled plans.
Cried in the bathroom once and told me hormones were making her emotional.
I had believed her.
Because believing easy explanations was apparently my greatest talent.
“Bring me the envelope.”
“I’m coming.”
The police searched the overlook.
No footprints toward the cliff.
That should have comforted me.
Instead, tracks led toward an access road.
Someone had picked Emma up.
Voluntarily or not, nobody knew.
Then one officer found tire marks.
SUV.
Recent.
I called Emma’s sister, Claire.
Straight to voicemail.
Her cousin.
Nothing.
Her old coworkers.
Nothing.
Then Rachel arrived.
She handed me the envelope.
Inside were three pages.
Emma’s handwriting.
Daniel,
There are things I should have told you before we married.
That sentence already frightened me.
I kept reading.
Before I met you, I was pregnant.
The father was not someone I loved.
He was someone I trusted.
His name was Andrew Bennett.
Mara’s older brother.
My stomach tightened.
I kept reading.
Andrew and I dated for eight months. I became pregnant at twenty-four. I planned to keep the baby.
Then Andrew disappeared.
Two weeks later, I miscarried at eleven weeks.
I blamed stress.
I blamed myself.
Years later, I learned the truth.
My hands stopped.
What truth?
The next line:
Andrew had not abandoned me.
He had died.
I looked up at Rachel.
She had tears in her eyes.
I continued.
Mara believed I caused his death.
She cut me out of her life.
I never understood why.
Then eight months ago, when I became pregnant with our baby, Mara contacted me for the first time in years.
My heart sped up.
Eight months.
Exactly when Emma’s anxiety started getting worse.
She wrote:
Mara told me Andrew’s death was not an accident.
She believed someone connected to my family had caused it.
I read faster.
There was a photocopy beneath the letter.
Old newspaper clipping.
ANDREW BENNETT, 27, KILLED IN LATE-NIGHT HIGHWAY COLLISION.
Driver fled.
No arrest.
Then a second document.
A police evidence list.
One item circled.
Vehicle registered to:
CARTER CAPITAL HOLDINGS.
My company.
No.
Not mine back then.
My father’s.
I stared at the page.
Andrew Bennett had been killed by a car owned by my family’s business.
And Emma had married me without knowing that until eight months ago.
Then Rachel whispered:
“Daniel…”
She was looking at the bottom of the letter.
May you like
One final sentence.
Mara says your father was driving.
