Chapter 3: What He Found Out
Margaret made the decision before I could.
"Children," she said, her voice steadier than it had any right to be, "come inside with me.
There are cookies in the kitchen and I would very much like to know all of your names properly."
Sophie looked up at me.
I nodded once.
The four of them followed Margaret through the front door, Grace glancing back over her shoulder as she went.
That left me on the porch with Daniel.
And Claire, who hadn't moved.
"Claire," Daniel said.
"Give us a minute."
"No." She crossed her arms.
"Whatever you have to say to her, you can say in front of me."
He looked at her for a long moment.
Then he looked at me.
Then he pulled a folded envelope from the inside pocket of his jacket and held it out.
I didn't take it.
"What is that?"
"A letter." His hand stayed extended.
"From my father."
I stared at him.
"Your father has been d*ad for six years."
"His lawyer held it.
Instructions were to deliver it when — " He stopped.
Swallowed.
"When certain conditions were met."
"What conditions?"
Daniel's arm dropped slowly to his side, the envelope still in his hand.
"When I had children," he said.
"Or when proof emerged that I already did."
The cold air between us felt suddenly different.
Heavier.
"His lawyer contacted me in September," Daniel continued.
"Three months ago.
Said there had been a tip.
An anonymous one.
Someone told them I had four children I'd never acknowledged.
They sent me a photograph."
"A photograph of what?"
"Of them." His jaw tightened.
"At their school.
Halloween costumes.
Noah was a pirate.
Ethan was an astronaut."
I remembered that day.
I had stood at the school gate with my phone, laughing because Grace had refused to wear her witch hat and had carried it under her arm the entire parade instead.
Someone had been watching.
"Who sent it?" I asked.
"I don't know."
"Daniel—"
"I genuinely don't know, Rachel." For the first time, he sounded less like a man managing a situation and more like a man who had been frightened for three months and hadn't told anyone.
"I hired someone to find out.
They couldn't trace it."
Claire had gone very still beside him.
"So someone has been watching your children," she said slowly, not to Daniel.
To me.
The word *watching* landed in my chest like something cold and sharp.
"What's in the letter?" I asked.
Daniel finally held it out again.
This time I took it.
The envelope was cream-colored, heavy stock, with my name written on the front in handwriting I didn't recognize.
*Rachel.*
Not *Rachel Reynolds.* Not *Daniel's wife.* Just my first name, as though whoever had written it had known exactly who I was long before I ever became part of their family.
"You haven't opened it?" I asked.
"It's addressed to you."
I looked at him.
"You've had this for three months."
He didn't deny it.
"I needed to understand what it meant before I—"
"Before you what?" My voice came out quieter than I intended, which was somehow worse than if I had raised it.
"Before you decided whether I deserved to read it?"
"That's not—"
"You had a letter addressed to me for three months, Daniel.
While my children were being photographed by someone you can't identify.
And you waited until Christmas Day to tell me."
He had no answer for that.
Claire looked at him with an expression I recognized — not anger, not yet.
The moment just before anger, when a person is still deciding whether what they're seeing is real.
I slid my finger under the envelope flap.
The letter inside was two pages, handwritten on the same heavy cream paper.
The date at the top was eleven years ago — two years before Daniel and I had even met.
I read the first paragraph.
Then I read it again.
My hand had started shaking before I reached the second page, and I hadn't noticed until the paper rattled softly in the cold air.
"Rachel." Daniel took a half-step toward me.
"What does it say?"
May you like
I looked up at him.
"It says your father knew about me before we met."
