My Father's Last Secret
Chapter 07 - My Father's Last Secret
I drove to Savannah alone.
Grant wanted to come.
I refused.
For the first time in fifteen years, I needed answers that didn't arrive through my husband.
The address led me to a small law office tucked between a bakery and an antique store.
The lawyer's name was Samuel Price.
He was seventy-two now.
He remembered my father immediately.
"William Carter."
He removed his glasses.
"I've wondered for years whether anyone would come asking."
My hands went cold.
"Asking about Hannah Reed?"
Samuel nodded.
My father had contacted him nine years earlier.
Not to silence Hannah.
To find her.
According to Samuel, Dad had discovered what Margaret had done several months after the forged letter was sent.
He had been furious.
"He wanted to tell you," Samuel said.
"Why didn't he?"
"Because Hannah asked him not to."
That made no sense.
Samuel opened an old file.
Hannah had believed Grant wrote the rejection letter.
By the time my father found her, she had already built a new life.
She was working.
Raising Eli.
Surviving.
She told my father that exposing everything would only drag her child into a family that didn't want him.
"Your father offered financial help," Samuel continued.
"Did she take it?"
"Not for herself."
Apparently, Dad created an education account for Eli.
Small deposits.
Nothing extravagant.
Enough that someday the boy might have choices.
Tears burned my eyes.
My father had carried the secret.
But he had also tried, imperfectly, to repair damage he hadn't created.
"Why didn't he tell Grant?"
Samuel looked uncomfortable.
"Because your father believed Grant had already chosen you."
"That choice should have been Grant's."
"I agree."
"So everyone decided for everyone else."
Samuel gave a sad smile.
"Families often call that love."
Before I left, he handed me a sealed envelope.
"Your father left this with me."
My name was written across the front.
I opened it in the car.
The letter was short.
Claire,
If you are reading this, then the truth finally found its way home.
I stopped.
My vision blurred.
I kept reading.
Dad apologized.
Not for knowing.
For waiting.
He wrote that after losing my daughter, he had been terrified another truth would break me.
Then came the sentence I would remember forever.
I confused protecting you with controlling your right to choose. Margaret made the same mistake for different reasons. Please don't repeat ours.
There was one final page.
A copy of a bank transfer.
Fifty thousand dollars.
Sent nine years earlier.
The recipient wasn't Hannah.
It was Margaret Bennett.
May you like
And beside it, my father had written:
Ask her what this money purchased.
