Two years since the bookstore reading where Caleb had turned toward me in the aisle and spoken my name as though he already knew it.
Two years of coffee, long drives, quiet evenings in his apartment.
None of it had been chance.
Grandpa continued.
“After Caleb’s mother died, William started pursuing your mother. Sarah refused him, so he fired her and made sure no decent family in the county would hire her again.”
“I remember yelling,” I whispered.
A memory flashed.
“A man yelling at Mom in a doorway.”
“That was William. I confronted him once. Caleb was there, holding onto the banister and watching us.”
Tears burned my eyes.
“I forgot all of this. I forgot everything.”
“Your mother packed you into the car that week. We never spoke about that family in this house again.”
“But Caleb is not William.”
“He is William’s son.”
Grandpa’s voice hardened.
“After what his father did to your mother, I didn’t care to find out whether Caleb was any different.”
I looked down at my daughter.
“Then he disappeared the second you told him about the baby,” Grandpa added more softly. “Emily, sweetheart, I thought that proved me right.”
I stared at Nora.
“If he was just cruel… why did he stay two years?”
Grandpa had no answer.
I slowly stood.
My knees still hurt from weeks spent sitting beside an incubator.
“I need to see for myself. Not through you. Not through what William did to Mom. I need to know what Caleb actually did to me.”
Grandpa closed his eyes.
I took Nora back and headed toward my car, already knowing where I would begin.
—
That night, after Nora fell asleep, I pulled my mother’s cedar box from the closet.
If Grandpa had hidden an entire family from me, I needed to know what else had been hidden.
I was searching for proof that Grandpa had been wrong about Caleb.
Instead, I found proof Caleb had been hiding things from me, too.
Beneath several old scarves was a photograph.
I was four years old, sitting on a red bicycle.
Beside me stood a dark-haired little boy.
One blue eye.
One nearly black.
Caleb.
Underneath the photograph was a bundle of letters.
