Chapter 4: What Daniel Buried
The envelope opened cleanly.
Daniel had used good paper, the kind he kept for important correspondence, and the seal had held for ten years without cracking.
Inside were three folded pages in his careful, unhurried handwriting.
I sat at his desk and read.
The first page covered what Ryan had already told me — the investment group, the eleven investors, the eighty thousand dollars.
Daniel's account was precise and without drama.
He listed names, dates, and amounts the way he listed everything: as facts that deserved to be treated as facts.
The second page was where his handwriting changed.
It slowed down.
The letters were slightly larger, the way his writing always got when he was choosing words carefully.
*There is a second matter I was unable to resolve before my illness progressed.
I am writing it here because I do not know how much time I have left to address it properly, and I cannot leave you without the information.*
*Approximately fourteen months before Ryan met Lauren, he was involved with a woman named Carla Simms.
The relationship ended badly.
In the months that followed, Carla contacted me directly.
She told me she had a child.
She told me the child was Ryan's.*
I set the page down on the desk.
Then I picked it up again and kept reading.
*I met with Carla twice.
I asked Ryan directly.
He denied it.
He said the timing was impossible and that Carla had reasons to lie.
I could not determine the truth with certainty.
Carla eventually stopped contacting me.
I do not know where she is now or whether the child exists or what became of them.
I only know that I was never able to close this question to my own satisfaction.*
*If Ryan ever needs the truth — this is the truth I could not give him myself.*
The third page was a single paragraph.
*Margaret.
I am sorry to leave this with you.
I tried to handle it while I still could.
I was not fast enough.
If this letter reaches you, it means something has happened that made you look for it.
Trust what you already know.
You have always been wiser than you believed.*
I folded the pages back along their original creases.
Ryan was standing in the doorway.
I hadn't heard him come up the stairs.
"How long have you been there?" I asked.
"Long enough."
He came in and sat in the chair across from the desk.
The same chair where he used to sit as a teenager when Daniel wanted to talk to him about something serious.
He was forty-one years old and he looked, in that moment, about seventeen.
"Carla Simms," I said.
He closed his eyes.
"Ryan.
Is there a child?"
"I don't know."
"That is not the same as no."
"I know it isn't." He opened his eyes.
"When Carla told Dad, I panicked.
I told him it was impossible.
It wasn't impossible.
It was unlikely.
There's a difference and I knew the difference and I lied anyway because I was scared and I didn't want to deal with it."
"Does Lauren know?"
The pause before his answer was about two seconds too long.
"Ryan."
"She found out six months ago.
She went through some old emails on my laptop.
There were messages between me and Carla from back then."
"What did the messages say?"
He rubbed the back of his neck.
"Carla had asked me to take a paternity test.
I told her I would.
Then I stopped responding."
The room was very quiet.
"So Lauren has known for six months," I said, "that there may be a child.
And she came to me two days ago asking for ten thousand dollars."
"Mom—"
"She told me this morning that she knew what was in the letter.
She used it as leverage.
She sat at my kitchen table and used your father's private letter as a reason I should fund her business."
Ryan's face went through something I hadn't seen on it in years.
Not embarrassment.
Something rawer than that.
"I didn't know she was going to do that," he said.
"I believe you." I set the letter on the desk between us.
"But I need you to understand what I'm looking at.
Your father spent eighty thousand dollars cleaning up a mistake you made at twenty-six.
There may be a child somewhere who has your name and doesn't know it.
And the woman you married has been sitting on that information for six months while planning how to use it."
Ryan looked at the letter for a long time.
"What do I do?" he asked.
It was such a young question.
The kind a son asks a mother when he has run out of his own answers.
"First," I said, "you find Carla Simms."
Downstairs, a door closed.
May you like
Lauren's car keys jingled once in the hallway.
Then the front door opened and shut.
