PART 4
The words blurred.
I read them again.
Then a third time.
Your father is not your biological father.
For thirty-two years, I had believed one thing about myself with absolute certainty.
Richard Harrison was my father.
Not perfect.
Not affectionate.
Not particularly interested in me.
But my father.
The man whose approval I had spent my entire life trying to earn.
The man whose disappointment had somehow always felt heavier than his praise.
The man who had looked at my landscape architecture degree and said, “That’s nice, Audrey, but Vivien is doing something with real potential.”
The man who had never come to one of my professional presentations.
The man who had forgotten my twenty-ninth birthday.
The man who had told me I was “too sensitive” when I cried.
And now Grandma was telling me that he wasn’t my father at all.
I slowly lowered the letter.
“Thomas…”
He didn’t interrupt.
“Is this real?”
“I don’t know everything yet.”
“Then why did Grandma write it?”
“Because she apparently wanted you to know.”
I shook my head.
“No. I need facts.”
Thomas nodded.
“That’s exactly what I thought.”
He opened a second folder.
“There are records here.”
He pushed them toward me.
I didn’t touch them.
“What records?”
“Your birth certificate. Hospital records. Your mother’s medical records from the year you were born. And a few documents your grandmother placed in the trust.”
My stomach tightened.
“Why would Grandma have these?”
“Because she was protecting you.”
I finally opened the folder.
The first page was my birth certificate.
Mother: Eleanor Harrison.
Father: Richard Harrison.
Nothing unusual.
Then Thomas handed me another document.
A hospital record.
The handwriting was faded.
The date was thirty-two years ago.
And beside my mother’s name was a note.
Father of child: Daniel Whitmore.
I stared at the name.
“Who is Daniel Whitmore?”
Thomas looked at me carefully.
“That is what we’re trying to determine.”
I turned another page.
There were photographs.
Old photographs.
My mother in her twenties.
My father standing beside her.
And another man.
Tall.
Dark-haired.
Smiling.
There was something unsettling about him.
Not because I recognized him.
Because I recognized myself.
The shape of his eyes.
His jaw.
Even the small crease beside his mouth.
I whispered, “That’s him.”
Thomas nodded.
“Daniel Whitmore.”
I looked at the photograph again.
“Where is he?”
Thomas hesitated.
“Dead.”
My heart sank.
“When?”
“Twenty-nine years ago.”
I stared at him.
“How?”
“Car accident.”
I closed my eyes.
Another piece of my life had suddenly become a question.
Then I noticed something written on the back of the photograph.
Grandma’s handwriting.
He never knew.
I looked up.
“He never knew I existed?”
Thomas shook his head.
“Apparently not.”
I swallowed.
“What happened between him and Mom?”
Thomas leaned back.
“That is the question.”
I looked down at the photograph.
For years, I’d wondered why I had never resembled my father.
Why I had inherited none of his features.
Why my eyes were lighter.
Why my hair was different.
Why relatives occasionally made strange comments about how I looked “so much like someone else.”
I’d always assumed it was meaningless.
Now it wasn’t.
I looked at the date on the photograph.
It had been taken six months before I was born.
My hands began shaking.
“Does my mother know?”
Thomas didn’t answer immediately.
Finally, he said, “Your grandmother believed she did.”
I felt something cold move through me.
“So Dad knows too?”
“I don’t know.”
“Then why did Grandma say Mom thinks she doesn’t know what she did?”
Thomas pointed to the first letter.
“That may refer to the loan.”
“Or something else.”
“Yes.”
I stared at the documents.
For the first time, I realized something.
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