My father stepped in behind her. “What’s going on?”
I handed Mom the phone. She read the messages while Dad looked over her shoulder.
Mom’s expression changed first. “Ted,” she whispered. “He wrote to her.”
Dad swore quietly under his breath.
Leo looked between all of us. “You didn’t know?”
“If I’d known Andrew wanted to stay involved,” my father snapped, “I would’ve gone to that house myself.”
“Ted,” Mom said softly.
“No, Lucy. That woman let our daughter believe she’d been abandoned.”
His voice cracked on the final word, and that finally shattered me.
It was my father nearly crying in my kitchen because someone stole years from me and Leo.
My son crossed the room and wrapped his arms around me.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered. “I didn’t know it would turn into this.”
I pulled back and held his face between my hands. “Don’t apologize for telling me the truth, honey. I need you to understand I’m not angry with you.”
His eyes were wet too.
“So he didn’t leave?” he asked.
I pressed a hand over my mouth and shook my head.
“No, baby. I think he was kept away from us.”
The kitchen fell silent.
A minute later, Leo said quietly, “Gwen wants to meet us. She says she still has the box.”
That was all it took.
By six o’clock, Leo and I were driving two counties over while my parents followed behind us in Dad’s truck like this had become a full family mission.
Leo reread Gwen’s messages the entire drive. I kept both hands gripping the steering wheel because I felt like I might fall apart otherwise.
Gwen lived in a tiny white house with flowerpots drooping on the porch. My parents promised to stay in the truck unless we needed them. Gwen opened the door before we even knocked.
She had Andrew’s mouth.
That nearly took my knees out.
“Heather?” she asked softly.
I nodded.
She burst into tears. “I’m so sorry.”
Then she looked at Leo and covered her mouth. “Oh my God. Sweetheart, you look exactly like him.”
Leo glanced helplessly toward me.
I stepped forward and hugged her.
Inside, she wasted no time.
“The box is upstairs,” she said. “It has as many of his letters as I could save.”
“You really kept them?” Leo asked quietly.
Gwen nodded. “I found them after our mother died last winter.”
She led us into the attic. It smelled like dust and old paper.
Then she knelt beside a storage bin and lifted the lid.
Letters.
Stacks of them. Birthday cards. Returned envelopes with my name written in Andrew’s handwriting.
