Chapter 1 - THE LETTER SHE NEVER RECEIVED
For several seconds, I could not move.
My mother’s handwriting stared back at me from the envelope.
He has chosen the Army and wants nothing to do with this child.
Seven years of anger suddenly had nowhere to stand.
I looked at Jessi.
“You saw this?”
“The day it came back.”
“Why didn’t you show anyone?”
“Who was I supposed to show, Ivan? Your mother was the one answering your phone. Your father told me you had asked them not to give me your deployment address.”
“I never asked that.”
“I know that now.”
Leo appeared in the kitchen doorway holding another gingerbread cookie.
“Mom?”
Jessi immediately closed the wooden box.
“Everything’s okay.”
He looked at me, then at her.
Children know when adults are lying about that sentence.
“I’m going to fix my star,” he announced.
Then he disappeared again.
I opened the letter.
Jessi had written it eight days after learning she was pregnant.
Ivan,
I know we are angry. I know the divorce papers are sitting between us and maybe you never want to forgive me. But before you leave, you need to know there is a baby.
Your baby.
I stopped reading.
My vision blurred.
Seven years earlier, I had left believing Jessi had betrayed me.
My mother showed me photographs of Jessi entering a hotel with another man.
She told me she had “protected me from humiliation.”
I confronted Jessi.
She said the photographs were not what they looked like.
I didn’t listen.
Three weeks later, our divorce was finalized.
Then I deployed.
And apparently Jessi discovered she was carrying my son.
The letter continued.
Please come yourself. Do not let your mother answer for you. Something is wrong, Ivan. She has been telling me things you say, but when I remember the man I married, I cannot believe those words belong to you.
I lowered the page.
“Jessi…”
She looked away.
“I waited.”
“For how long?”
“Until Leo was born.”
My chest hurt.
“Why stop then?”
“I didn’t.”
She went upstairs.
When she returned, she carried another envelope.
Same handwriting on the front.
Mine.
Except I had never written it.
Jessi placed it in my hands.
Inside was a single page.
Jessi,
The baby changes nothing. I want no involvement in your life or the child’s. Do not contact me again.
Ivan.
My name was signed at the bottom.
The handwriting looked almost perfect.
Almost.
I stared at Jessi.
“I never wrote this.”
“I know.”
“How?”
“Because I spent seven years hating you for it.”
Her voice trembled.
“Then six months ago, Leo asked me what his father’s handwriting looked like.”
She swallowed.
“So I pulled out our old anniversary cards.”
She pointed to the signature.
“You never make the I in Ivan like that.”
I looked again.
She was right.
Someone had forged a letter telling the mother of my child that I had rejected him.
And whoever had done it had known my handwriting well enough to fool my wife.
May you like
Only a handful of people fit that description.
One of them was my mother.
