Chapter 3: What the Letter Said
Grant picked up the envelope.
The paper was soft at the fold lines, worn the way paper gets when someone has opened and refolded it many times.
His name was written in his mother's precise, slanted cursive — the same handwriting from birthday cards, from notes left on his desk, from the letter she had written when he left for university.
He looked up at Tessa.
"How long have you had this?"
"Six years." She kept her voice low.
The boys had settled into a corner booth with coloring sheets a colleague had quietly brought over.
"She gave it to me three days after I told her I was pregnant."
Grant's thumb moved along the envelope's edge but didn't open it.
"You told my mother before you told me?"
"I tried to tell you first." A muscle in her jaw moved.
"I called four times that week.
You never picked up.
I went to the house and Eleanor answered the door.
She said you were traveling for work and that she would pass on the message." Tessa paused.
"She called me back the next morning.
She said you already knew.
She said you'd asked her to handle it."
The noise of the restaurant — silverware, low conversation, a child laughing two tables over — seemed to recede.
"Handle it," Grant repeated.
"She told me you weren't ready to be a father.
That you had obligations to the family that couldn't accommodate a — she used the word complication." Tessa's voice didn't waver, but her hands gripped the edge of the apron.
"Then she gave me that envelope.
She said it was from you.
That it explained everything."
Grant finally opened it.
The letter inside was one page.
His name was not on it.
It was addressed to Tessa, and it was written in his mother's hand, but the signature at the bottom read Grant Hollowell.
His mother had signed his name.
He read it slowly.
The letter was measured and cold.
It said that he had given the situation careful thought.
That he cared for Tessa but that their relationship had run its course.
That he was not in a position to be involved with a child.
That a sum of money would be transferred to her account to ensure she was comfortable, and that he hoped she would understand his decision was final.
Grant set the letter on the table.
"I never wrote this."
"I know that now." Tessa looked at the letter the way someone looks at an old wound that has finally been named.
"I didn't know it then.
I was twenty-six, I was alone, and the man I loved had apparently just paid me to disappear."
"Tessa—"
"I didn't take the money." Her chin lifted slightly.
"I want you to know that.
Whatever she told you about me, I never touched it."
Grant hadn't known about any money.
He hadn't known about any of it.
He looked toward the corner booth.
Miles was drawing something with great concentration.
Mason had fallen asleep against Micah's shoulder.
Milo was watching Grant from across the room with an expression that was unnervingly familiar — cautious, measuring, not quite trusting.
Grant's own expression, at eight years old, in every photograph his father had ever taken.
"What did you tell them?" he asked.
"About their father."
"That he didn't know about them." She said it simply, without accusation.
"I always believed that was true.
I told them that if he ever found out, he would want to know them." She stopped.
"I needed to believe that."
Grant looked back at the letter.
His mother's handwriting.
His forged name.
Six years of a life that had been quietly removed from him while he stood in rooms like the one directly above his head, being steered toward a future that had been selected for him the same way his cuff links had been.
"She's upstairs right now," he said.
Tessa went very still.
"Grant.
Be careful."
He folded the letter and placed it back in the envelope.
"I need you to stay here.
Don't take the boys anywhere."
She reached across the table and her hand closed over his wrist — not gently.
"She has lawyers, Grant.
She has the board.
If you go up there and confront her in front of the Redfords, she will find a way to make this about your instability.
I have seen what she does when she feels cornered." Her eyes were steady.
"I've had six years to think about what kind of woman sends a letter like that."
Grant looked at her hand on his wrist.
Then at her face.
"I'm not going up there to argue with her." He stood.
"I'm going up there to end the engagement."
He walked toward the elevator.
Behind him, from the corner booth, Miles's voice carried across the room.
"Mom.
Is that man coming back?"
Grant didn't hear Tessa's answer.
May you like
The elevator doors opened.
His mother was standing inside it.
