Chapter 8 - The Money My Father Paid Margaret
I called Daniel first.
Then Claire.
Within hours, they were sitting in my kitchen.
For the first time in my life, my son sat at the table where I had eaten thousands of meals with Margaret.
That felt almost unbearable.
I placed the payment document between us.
Claire stared at the amount.
“Forty thousand dollars was a fortune back then.”
“It still doesn’t explain why Dad paid her.”
Daniel examined the handwriting.
“Maybe he found out about Mom and me.”
I looked toward Claire.
“Did you ever contact my parents after Daniel was born?”
Her face changed.
“Once.”
My stomach dropped.
“When?”
“About three months after his birth.”
“You never told me that.”
“I wrote your mother.”
“What did you say?”
“I told her about Daniel. I asked her to give you my address.”
I leaned back.
“Did she answer?”
“No.”
My mother had died eighteen years earlier.
I had no way to ask her.
But maybe Dad had seen the letter.
Maybe both my parents knew.
That possibility hurt almost as much as Margaret’s betrayal.
We searched the attic.
Dad’s old boxes had been stored there after Mom died.
Near midnight, Daniel found a bundle of letters tied with string.
Claire’s handwriting.
Three letters.
All unopened.
All addressed to me.
None had ever reached me.
Inside the first was a photograph of newborn Daniel.
I held it with shaking hands.
He was tiny.
Sleeping.
A dark patch of hair across his head.
My son.
The second letter described his first smile.
The third begged me to contact them.
I cried until I could barely read.
Then Daniel noticed something.
“These weren’t mailed to this house.”
He was right.
They were forwarded from my parents’ address.
Someone had intercepted them before I ever saw them.
At the bottom of the box was my father’s journal.
One entry mentioned Margaret.
She came again today. She knows about Claire’s baby. I told her to leave David alone, but she says she loves him.
Another entry followed weeks later.
Margaret threatens to tell David everything unless I help her.
Everything?
What could Margaret possibly threaten my father with?
We kept reading.
Then we found it.
A page dated two months before my wedding.
I made a terrible mistake twenty years ago. Margaret knows the truth about her father. If David learns what I did, I may lose my son forever.
I looked at Daniel.
Claire stopped breathing.
The next sentence was worse.
May you like
Margaret Ellison is not an orphan.
Her father was my brother.
