Chapter 6 - THE LETTERS ETHAN NEVER RECEIVED
At two in the morning, Ethan sat alone in a hospital conference room with Olivia's letters spread across the table.
Lucy had finally fallen asleep on a couch in the family waiting room.
Robert sat nearby, but Ethan refused to look at him.
Mason had left briefly to obtain secure storage for the original documents.
Ethan opened the first letter.
Dear Ethan.
Lucy is three months old today.
I know you hate me.
You should.
But I lied when I told you she wasn't yours.
Ethan stopped reading.
His hands shook.
He forced himself to continue.
The letter described Lucy's birth.
Seven pounds, two ounces.
Dark hair.
A small crescent birthmark.
She settles when I play the song you used to hum while cooking.
I tell her about you even though I don't know if I'll ever be brave enough to let you meet her.
Ethan pressed the page to the table.
Robert looked away.
“Did you read this?”
“No.”
“You destroyed letters without reading them?”
“Some.”
“You never wondered what your granddaughter looked like?”
Robert shut his eyes.
“Every day.”
Ethan laughed bitterly.
“That makes it worse.”
The fifth letter was written when Lucy was two.
Olivia begged Ethan to meet her at a park in Baltimore.
Ethan remembered that exact week.
Victoria had appeared unexpectedly at his office and convinced him to travel to Boston for a business conference.
The conference had been unnecessary.
Now he knew why.
The ninth letter came when Lucy was four.
Olivia wrote that Lucy had asked why other children had fathers at school events.
The twelfth letter came after Lucy broke her arm falling from a swing.
The fifteenth described her first piano recital.
The eighteenth contained a photograph.
Lucy at seven.
Missing two front teeth.
Holding a handmade sign.
HAPPY BIRTHDAY, DAD.
Ethan covered his mouth.
Robert stood.
“Ethan.”
“Don't.”
“I am sorry.”
“Don't say that.”
“There's nothing else I can say.”
“There were eleven birthdays.”
Robert stopped moving.
“Eleven Christmas mornings.”
Ethan's voice cracked.
“Eleven years of school pictures.”
Robert stared at the floor.
“I know.”
“No.”
Ethan stood.
“You don't know.”
He picked up the photograph.
“She made this for me.”
Robert's eyes filled.
Ethan pointed at him.
“And you made sure I never saw it.”
Robert sank back into the chair.
The final letter was dated six weeks earlier.
Dear Ethan.
I'm running out of time.
Lucy deserves the truth even if you hate me afterward.
Victoria is marrying you on August twenty-ninth.
I tried to convince myself it was none of my business.
But I cannot let her become your wife while she is still controlling what happens to our daughter.
Lucy is yours.
There is proof.
Not just my word.
Dr. Samuel Grant performed a private DNA test when Lucy was six months old.
I kept a copy.
Victoria's people took the original from my apartment, but Dr. Grant told me the clinic archived records.
If anything happens to me, find him.
Ethan stood so quickly the chair nearly fell.
“Dad.”
Robert looked up.
“Do you know Dr. Samuel Grant?”
Robert's expression gave him away.
Ethan walked toward him.
“You do.”
Robert swallowed.
“He was the doctor Victoria used.”
“For what?”
“The first paternity test.”
Ethan froze.
“What first test?”
Robert looked terrified.
“The one Victoria showed me eleven years ago.”
“What did it say?”
“That you weren't Lucy's father.”
Ethan stared at him.
“You believed it?”
“I wanted to.”
Ethan understood the real horror.
There had been a paternity test.
Victoria had shown Robert a result.
Olivia had secretly obtained another result.
Two tests.
Two different answers.
Mason returned at that moment.
Ethan handed him the final letter.
“Find Samuel Grant.”
Mason read it.
Then reached for his phone.
“I'll start now.”
Ethan looked through the glass wall toward the waiting room.
Lucy was asleep beneath a hospital blanket.
Her head rested against the arm of the couch.
For the first time, Ethan allowed himself to say the word silently.
Daughter.
Then Mason looked up from his phone.
“You're not going to like this.”
“What?”
“Samuel Grant disappeared eight years ago.”
Ethan's stomach dropped.
Mason turned the screen toward him.
The article headline read.
May you like
LOCAL PHYSICIAN MISSING AFTER PRIVATE PLANE CRASH.
No body had ever been recovered.
