Chapter 3: What My Daughter Wrote
I looked back at the car.
My grandson was still inside, head bent over his card, pressing too hard with a red crayon the way he always did.
Completely unaware.
I turned back to the woman.
"Tell me your name."
"Diane," she said.
"Diane Marsh."
"Diane." I said it slowly, like I was trying to remember if my daughter had ever spoken it.
She hadn't.
"How long have you known where we were?"
"About three years." She pressed her lips together.
"I drove past your house once.
I sat in the car for almost an hour.
I couldn't make myself get out."
"Why not?"
"Because I was afraid of what opening that envelope would do to your life." She glanced at the headstone.
"And to his."
I looked down at the envelope in my hands.
My name in my daughter's handwriting.
The letters slightly uneven, the way she always wrote when she was scared.
I slid my finger under the seal.
The paper inside was folded three times.
Both sides covered in her handwriting, small and tight, like she was trying to fit an entire life onto two pages.
I read the first line.
*Mom, if you're reading this, I didn't make it.
I'm sorry I wasn't brave enough to tell you this myself.*
My throat closed.
"Take your time," Diane said quietly.
I couldn't speak.
I kept reading.
*His name is Carter Welles.
He was twenty-six when we met.
I was seventeen.
I know what you're thinking, and you're right.
But I loved him.
I thought he loved me.*
*When I told him I was pregnant, he didn't get angry.
He got very calm.
That was worse.
He said if I told anyone who the father was, his family would make sure I never had a stable life again.
He said they had lawyers.
He said I was nobody.*
*I believed him.
So I said nothing.*
*But I wrote everything down.
Dates.
Conversations.
A voice message he left me that I saved.
I gave everything to Diane to keep safe.
She knows where it all is.*
*I don't know if any of it matters now.
But if he ever comes near my baby, it will matter.
Use it.*
I lowered the letter.
Diane was watching me carefully.
"Carter Welles," I said.
She nodded once.
"She was seventeen when they met."
"Yes."
I folded the letter back along its creases.
My hands had stopped shaking.
Something colder had replaced the trembling.
"You said he's been watching."
"His family has money," Diane said.
"Old money.
They have people who find things out.
About two years ago, someone started asking questions in your neighborhood.
A man.
He said he was doing a survey.
One of your neighbors mentioned it to me — I'd given her my number years ago, just in case."
"Just in case," I repeated.
"I should have come sooner.
I know that."
"What does he want?"
Diane hesitated.
"His father d*ed eight months ago," she said.
"There's an estate.
Significant.
And apparently the will has conditions." She paused.
"Carter never married.
He has no other children."
The ground felt different under my feet.
"He wants my grandson."
Diane didn't deny it.
"He wants to establish paternity.
Legally."
The car door opened behind me.
My grandson's sneakers hit the gravel path.
"Grandma, I found it." He held up the card, slightly bent at one corner.
"Can we put it by the flowers?"
I turned around.
I looked at his face — his dark eyes, the way he tilted his head exactly the way his mother used to.
"Of course we can, sweetheart."
He walked past me toward the headstone, completely trusting, completely safe in the only world he had ever known.
I looked back at Diane.
May you like
"Does he know where we live?"
Her silence was the answer.
