Chapter 4: What Mike Left Behind
I picked up the envelope.
The paper was slightly worn at the corners, as if Harold had handled it more than once.
I turned it over.
The seal was still intact.
"Did you read it?" I asked.
"No."
I believed him.
I wasn't sure why, but I did.
I slid my finger under the flap and opened it.
The letter was two pages, handwritten, in Mike's cramped left-handed script that always slanted slightly uphill.
I had loved that about his handwriting.
It always looked like it was trying to climb somewhere.
I read the first line.
*If you're reading this, then Harold finally found his courage.
Don't be too hard on him.
He was protecting you the only way he knew how.*
My eyes blurred.
I blinked and kept reading.
*There are things I should have told you myself.
I tried, twice.
Once the night before our wedding.
Once in the hospital, near the end.
Both times I looked at your face and I couldn't do it.
That was cowardice.
I know that.
I'm sorry.*
Harold sat very still across from me.
I was aware of him the way you're aware of furniture — present, not intruding.
*Harold and I were close for three years when we were young.
It ended before I met you.
It ended because we both knew it wasn't the life either of us was going to live.
We stayed friends because what we had built together — the trust, the history — that was worth keeping.
I never stopped valuing him.
But I never stopped loving you more.*
I set the first page on my knee and moved to the second.
*What I need you to know — what I most need you to know — is that Mia is mine.
She is ours.
There is no question about that and I will not have you carrying one for a single day.
If anyone ever suggests otherwise, they are wrong.*
I stopped.
Read that paragraph again.
"Harold."
"Yes."
"He wrote that Mia is his.
That there's no question." I looked up.
"Why would he feel the need to write that?"
Harold's jaw tightened slightly.
"Because there were people who asked questions they had no right to ask."
"What people?"
He was quiet.
"Harold, what people?"
"His brother," Harold said.
"Daniel."
The name landed like a cold hand on the back of my neck.
Daniel.
Mike's younger brother, who had barely spoken to me at the funeral.
Who had looked at Mia with an expression I had told myself was grief.
"What did Daniel say?"
"After Mike d*ed, Daniel came to me.
He said he had doubts about Mia's paternity.
He said he wanted a DNA test before any inheritance decisions were made."
The room tilted slightly.
"He never came to me with that."
"No.
He came to me.
He thought I might — agree with him.
Or support him." Harold's voice was careful.
"I told him he was wrong and that he needed to stop."
"Did he?"
Harold looked at the window again.
That same half-second pause.
"Harold."
"He filed a legal inquiry six months ago," Harold said.
"A formal challenge to Mia's standing as Mike's heir.
It's been moving through a probate process quietly.
I didn't tell you because I was trying to handle it."
I stood up.
"You were trying to handle it."
"I didn't want to put this on you while you were still—"
"She is four years old." My voice came out low and very clear.
"Someone is legally challenging whether my four-year-old daughter belongs to her father.
And you decided to handle it."
"I was protecting—"
"You were deciding what I could know about my own daughter's future." I picked up the letter and the envelope.
"Where is this legal inquiry now?"
"There's a hearing scheduled," Harold said.
"In three weeks."
"And you were going to tell me when?"
He didn't answer.
I walked to the door.
Stopped with my hand on the frame.
"I'm going to get Mia.
And then you are going to give me the name of every lawyer involved in this, every document filed, and every conversation you had with Daniel." I turned back.
"All of it.
Tonight."
Harold nodded.
"And Harold." I held the letter up slightly.
"Thank you for this.
I mean that." My hand dropped.
"But don't protect me from my own life again."
I walked back down the hall.
May you like
The photographs of Mike watched me go.
Outside, through the glass, I could see Mia sitting on Janet's lap, eating a cookie, completely unaware that somewhere in a courthouse, someone was trying to erase her father's name from hers.
