Chapter 6: What He Believed
The main hall of the estate was empty.
The caterers had cleared the service areas.
The florals were still in place — no one had come to remove those yet — and the orchids and hydrangeas stood in their silver vases as though nothing had changed, which made the silence feel stranger.
I found Caleb in the small sitting room off the main corridor.
He was still in his linen trousers and dress shirt, jacket off, sitting on the edge of a wingback chair with his elbows on his knees.
He looked up when I came in.
He looked like he was twelve years old.
"Where's Morgan?" I asked.
"Upstairs." He rubbed his face with both hands.
"She said she needed a few minutes."
I sat down in the chair across from him.
For a moment neither of us spoke.
Through the window behind him, I could see the last of the guests making their way toward the parking area.
A woman in a cream dress was helping an older man with a cane across the gravel.
Someone had left a champagne glass balanced on the edge of the stone fountain.
"Tell me about the letter," I said.
Caleb's hands dropped from his face.
"She told you."
"Diane brought it to me."
He closed his eyes briefly.
"I found it in the box you gave me.
The one with Dad's things.
His watch, the cufflinks, some papers."
"I never put a letter in that box, Caleb."
"I know that now."
"What do you mean, now?"
He looked at me.
His expression was something I hadn't seen on his face in a long time.
Not anger.
Not the careful blankness he'd worn on the lawn this afternoon.
Something rawer than either.
"About six months ago I started noticing things," he said.
"Little things.
Morgan would mention something about Dad that I hadn't told her.
A detail.
A specific date.
I'd ask where she heard it and she'd say I must have told her and I'd think — maybe.
Maybe I had."
"But you hadn't."
"I don't think so.
No." He leaned back.
"And then I found the letter.
And it said everything I'd been feeling for years but couldn't say out loud.
That Dad had been unhappy.
That the marriage hadn't been what it looked like.
And I—" He stopped.
"You believed it," I said.
"I wanted to believe it." The words came out with difficulty.
"Because if Dad had been unhappy, then his passing made a different kind of sense.
It wasn't just random and cruel.
There was a reason.
A story.
Something I could hold."
I looked at my son.
"Dad was not unhappy," I said.
"Not with me.
Not with our life.
He was sick, Caleb.
He was sick and he fought it and he lost.
That's the whole story.
There is no other version."
"I know." His voice was rough.
"I know that.
I think I've always known it.
But Morgan — she was so certain.
She said she'd spoken to someone who knew Dad.
Someone who confirmed it."
"Who?"
He shook his head.
"She never said a name.
Just that someone who'd been close to him had told her the truth."
I thought about the letter.
The careful handwriting.
The circling, indirect phrasing that Diane had identified as wrong.
"Caleb, that letter is a forgery."
He went very still.
"The handwriting is close to your father's.
But the language isn't his.
Someone constructed it.
Someone who had access to examples of his writing and enough time to practice."
"That's—" He stopped.
Started again.
"That's not possible."
"It is possible.
And I think you know, somewhere, that it's possible."
He stood up.
Walked to the window.
Stood with his back to me, looking out at the emptying grounds.
"She loves me," he said.
It came out like a question.
"I'm sure she does, in her way."
"Then why—"
"The Charleston property." I said it plainly.
"The house your grandparents left your father.
It passed to me.
There's a clause in the estate that could theoretically be challenged.
A forged letter establishing that your father's marriage had broken down before he passed would be useful evidence in that challenge."
Caleb turned from the window.
"She was going to take your house."
"She was going to try.
After the wedding.
After she had legal standing as your wife."
He stared at me.
His face had gone the color of the stone wall behind him.
"Did you know?" I asked.
"Any part of it."
"No." The word came out immediately.
Then, slower: "No.
I swear to you.
I didn't know."
I looked at him for a long moment.
"I believe you," I said.
He sat back down.
Put his head in his hands.
"She's upstairs," he said quietly.
"I know."
"I don't know what to do."
"Yes you do." I stood up.
"You've known what to do all day.
You just kept choosing not to do it."
He looked up at me.
"Start now," I said.
"It's not too late to start now."
Footsteps on the stairs.
Morgan appeared in the doorway.
She looked at Caleb.
Then at me.
May you like
Then at the expression on Caleb's face.
And for the first time all day, she looked genuinely afraid.
