Chapter 7: The Years Before
I didn't ask him that night.
I drove home and I sat with the box on my kitchen table and I told myself I was being paranoid, that I had just watched my father cry for the first time in my life and that my mind was looking for something to distrust because trust felt dangerous after a night like that.
I told myself that until morning.
Then I called Leo.
"The three years before you registered the firm," I said.
"What were you doing?"
A pause.
Not long.
But there.
"Working construction," he said.
"Finishing my license hours.
Saving."
"And looking for us," I said.
"Looking for my family."
Another pause.
"Yes," he said.
I sat down at the kitchen table.
"How long did it take you to find us?"
"About eight months," he said.
"Once I had the documents and knew the firm's history, it wasn't difficult.
Your father's name is on the firm's public filings."
"And then?"
"And then I found out he had a daughter.
And I—" He stopped.
"You what, Leo."
"I looked you up," he said.
"I found your name.
I saw where you worked.
And I told myself I was going to walk away from the whole thing because it was too complicated and too personal and I had no right to insert myself into your life."
"But you didn't walk away."
"No."
"Because?"
A long pause this time.
"Because I saw a photograph of you," he said.
"At a work event.
You were laughing at something off-camera.
And I thought — she looks like someone who deserves to know the truth.
Not just about Callum.
About everything." He paused again.
"And then I met you at that conference and you spilled coffee on my sleeve and apologized four times and I thought — I'm in serious trouble."
I pressed my fingers against my eyes.
"Leo," I said.
"I know how it sounds."
"It sounds like you sought me out."
"I did," he said.
"And then I fell in love with you.
And those two things have lived next to each other for six years and I have never known what to do with that except to try to be someone who deserved to be there."
I didn't say anything.
"Claire," he said.
"I'm not going to tell you it wasn't calculated in the beginning.
It was.
I wanted to get close to your family.
I wanted to understand what had been done." His voice was steady, but I could hear the effort in it.
"What I'm telling you is that it stopped being that.
Completely.
And I don't know how to prove that to you except to say that the document I put in front of your father last night — the one with the scholarship — I drew that up six months ago, when I could have walked away from all of it and you never would have known."
"Why didn't you?" I said.
"Walk away."
"Because Callum deserved better than silence," he said.
"And because you deserved the truth.
Even if the truth cost me you."
I looked at the box on my kitchen table.
The brass latch.
The stitched spine of the book inside.
"I need some time," I said.
"I know," he said.
"I'm not — I'm not ending this.
I just need to think."
"Take whatever you need," he said.
"I'll be here."
I hung up and sat for a long time in my kitchen.
The question wasn't whether I believed him.
I did, in the complicated way you believe someone when the story they're telling is too specific and too costly to be entirely invented.
The question was what I did with the fact that the man I loved had walked into my life with a purpose, and that purpose had nothing to do with me.
I called Amy.
She picked up on the second ring.
"I know why you're calling," she said.
"Do you?"
"You're wondering if it was real." She paused.
"I've been wondering the same thing since last night."
"And?"
"And I think—" She stopped.
I heard her exhale.
"I think a man who wanted to use you would have used the documents differently.
He would have gone to a lawyer.
Or the press.
He wouldn't have spent five years making you a handmade book."
"That's what I keep coming back to," I said.
"The book isn't strategy," Amy said.
"The book is something else."
I looked at the box.
"He looked me up," I said.
"Before we met.
He knew who I was."
"I know," Amy said.
"Dad told me this morning.
Leo called him."
I sat up.
"Leo called Dad?"
"This morning.
Early.
He told him everything.
The full timeline.
How he found us, when, what he was thinking." A pause.
"He said he wanted Dad to know before you did, so that if you called Dad to check the story, Dad would already have it."
I thought about that.
A man calling my father at eight in the morning to make sure I had access to the truth from every direction.
"What did Dad say?" I asked.
"He said—" Amy's voice shifted.
"He said that a man who volunteers the worst version of himself before he's caught is a man worth listening to."
I was quiet.
"Claire," Amy said.
"I owe you an apology.
A real one.
Not just for last night.
For six years."
I didn't say anything.
"I treated him like he was nothing," she said.
"I treated you like your choices were embarrassing.
And I was wrong." Her voice was careful, like someone moving across uncertain ground.
"I was wrong and I'm sorry."
I pressed my hand flat on the table.
"Okay," I said.
"Okay?" she said.
"That's it?"
"I'm working up to more," I said.
"Give me a minute."
She made a sound that was almost a laugh.
We talked for another hour.
About Leo, about our father, about Callum's letter and what it had done to all of us.
About the scholarship.
About Ruth, Leo's mother, who had kept a trunk of drawings under her bed for thirty years because she couldn't let the last true thing go.
When I hung up, I sat in the quiet of my kitchen for a long time.
Then I picked up my phone and called Leo back.
He answered on the first ring.
"I have one condition," I said.
"Tell me," he said.
"I want to meet her," I said.
"Your mother.
Before anything else.
Before the meeting with Dad's partners, before the scholarship announcement, before any of it." I paused.
"I want to sit with her and hear about Callum from someone who loved him."
He was quiet for a moment.
"She'd like that," he said.
His voice had changed — something in it had loosened.
"She's been asking about you for months."
"She has?"
"She wanted to know if you were kind," he said.
"I told her yes.
She said — she said that was the only thing that mattered."
May you like
I looked at the box one more time.
"When can we go?" I said.
