Chapter 2 - “You told me there wasn’t one.”
“I believed there wasn’t.”
“That’s different from what you just said.”
“Yes.”
“Where is it?”
“I don’t know.”
“Does Evelyn?”
His silence told me enough.
I walked to the window.
Below us, headlights threaded through the streets.
All those years, I had assumed grief had given me everything it had left behind.
Now I wondered whether a piece of my mother had been waiting somewhere in the same city.
“Why would Evelyn keep a letter from me?”
“I don’t know that she did.”
“But you suspected it.”
“Yes.”
I closed my eyes.
Behind me, my father said softly, “Emily.”
“I’m not angry.”
“You should be.”
“I don’t know what I am.”
That was the truth.
Confusion had crowded out everything else.
Before either of us could speak again, the intercom buzzed.
My father stiffened.
I crossed to the panel.
“Who is it?”
The doorman answered.
“Ms. Carter, there’s a gentleman downstairs asking to see you.”
My father frowned. “Who?”
The doorman paused.
“Daniel Hale.”
I looked at the jacket folded on my couch.
My father looked at it too.
“What does he want?” he asked.
The intercom crackled again.
“He says he has something belonging to your mother.”
The room went utterly still.
Twenty minutes later, Daniel sat across from us at my kitchen table.
He had changed his tie but still wore the same navy trousers and white shirt from the gala.
Between us lay a thin cream envelope.
My name was written across the front.
Emily.
I recognized the handwriting immediately.
My mother’s.
I could not touch it.
“Where did you get this?” I whispered.
Daniel looked at my father first.
Then at me.
“My mother gave it to me tonight.”
“Why you?”
“She didn’t trust herself to come here.”
My father’s voice was dangerously quiet.
“She had sixteen years.”
Daniel nodded.
“I know.”
“Why now?”
Daniel took a breath.
“Because Preston’s mistake put all of you in the same room again.”
“That still doesn’t explain it.”
“No.”
Daniel folded his hands.
“There’s something else.”
I finally picked up the envelope.
It was heavier than a single sheet of paper.
“What?”
Daniel looked uncomfortable.
“My mother said your mother wrote two letters before she died.”
I looked at my father.
He appeared genuinely startled.
“Two?”
Daniel nodded.
“One was for Emily.”
“And the other?”
Daniel’s eyes moved to my father.
“For you.”
My father stared at him.
“Where is it?”
“That’s the problem.”
Daniel glanced toward the envelope in my hands.
“My mother doesn’t have it anymore.”
“Who does?”
Daniel hesitated.
“My father.”
For the first time that night, I understood the strange look that had passed between Michael Carter and Richard Hale.
Whatever had happened between our families had not ended with my mother’s death.
It had merely gone quiet.
I turned the envelope over.
There, beneath the sealed flap, my mother had written five additional words in tiny blue ink.
Ask Richard about the promise.
I looked up.
May you like
My father had seen them too.
And for the first time in my life, Michael Carter looked afraid of an answer.
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