Chapter 6
My father had been dead to me for twenty-eight years.
Not literally.
Worse.
He had left when I was five, or that was what my mother told me.
Packed a suitcase.
Walked out.
Started another life somewhere in Arizona.
When I cried for him, she held me and said, “Some people love badly, baby. It doesn’t mean you were hard to love.”
I built my life around that sentence.
Now Jake’s voice crawled through the phone and tried to poison it.
“You think your mother was a saint?” he said. “Read the letters.”
Denise signaled for me to keep him talking.
“What did you do with them?”
“They’re safe.”
“Where?”
“You drop the charges, I tell you.”
I looked at Denise.
She shook her head.
I already knew.
“No.”
Jake’s breathing changed.
“You’re making a mistake.”
“You made several.”
I hung up.
My hands were cold.
Denise immediately called Officer Daniels.
Within hours, police searched Jake’s storage unit again.
This time, they found a plastic folder taped under a drawer.
Letters.
Dozens.
Some unopened.
All addressed to my mother.
From Thomas Reed.
My father.
The first letter began:
Emily, please let me see Sarah. I don’t understand why you won’t answer. I sent money again. Tell her I love her.
I stopped reading.
The room blurred.
Rosa sat beside me without touching me.
Denise read quietly.
Officer Daniels stood near the kitchen entrance, uncomfortable but respectful.
There were receipts.
Child support checks.
Birthday cards.
Photos.
Legal notices.
My father had tried to contact me.
For years.
My mother had hidden all of it.
The discovery should have shattered my love for her.
It didn’t.
That confused me.
It did something stranger.
It made her human in a way grief had never allowed.
Flawed.
Afraid.
Maybe wrong.
Still my mother.
Still the woman who worked double shifts.
Still the woman who held my hair when I was sick.
Still the woman who lied.
Denise placed one letter aside.
“This one is recent.”
My breath caught.
“How recent?”
“Three years ago.”
Before Mom died.
I opened it.
Emily, I know you are ill. Linda told me. Please let me come. Not for you, if you can’t forgive me. For Sarah. She deserves the truth before it is too late.
Linda told him.
Aunt Linda knew.
She knew my father had been trying.
She knew my mother was hiding letters.
She knew I had been living with a half-truth.
And she used it only when she needed leverage.
That betrayal settled deeper than theft.
I looked at Denise.
“Can we find him?”
She nodded.
“If he’s alive, yes.”
He was.
Three hours later, Denise found Thomas Reed living outside Tucson.
Retired contractor.
No criminal record.
No second family.
No dramatic scandal.
Just a man who had sent letters into a locked door for nearly three decades.
I did not call him that day.
I could not.
Instead, I took my mother’s ring from evidence after processing and held it in both hands.
“Why?” I whispered.
No one answered.
The next morning, a package arrived by courier.
No return address.
Inside was a flash drive and a note in Jake’s handwriting.
Your mother wasn’t the only liar.
I plugged it into Denise’s spare laptop.
A video opened.
My aunt Linda sat at a table with Jake, filmed weeks earlier.
She slid him a key.
“Sarah will be gone fourteen days,” she said. “Take what you can. Once she looks unstable, we’ll challenge the will.”
Jake asked, “And if she calls the cops?”
May you like
Linda smiled.
“Then we give her the father letters and watch her fall apart.”
