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But I spoiled my good humor when I turned to my agenda and read a note I’d made for myself a little while ago.
Follow up with PI.
A knot tightened in my gut and the reaction was so swift and unexpected, I was glad I’d been sitting down.
Two weeks earlier, I’d stumbled upon a letter. One written by my late mother. I’d found it in a box of stuff Luke had collected from the house when he’d renovated our parent’s home. I hadn’t looked through it until recently. Now I wished I hadn’t looked at all.
Tucked between the pages of a Nora Roberts novel, my mother had addressed the letter to a man named John. I didn’t know any John my mother would have sent letters to.
Pulling the letter out of my briefcase, I read it again.
My dearest John,
Today was a good day. I took the boys to the playground and Luke lost his first tooth. He was very excited and didn’t care that it was caked in sand. He held it proudly in his clenched fist until he could rinse it off at home.
I wish you could have been there. I thought about asking you to join us so many times because I often dream about you meeting them. I know you’d love them.
I miss you so much. Every day I think of you. My heart breaks thinking of us apart. I write these letters so I can feel closer to you. I hope they make you feel closer to me, too. I know I’ve kept our relationship a secret for so long and you’ve been so terribly patient with me, but I think it’s time I told my family the truth. It’s time that I confess everything to them.
Soon, we will be together, I promise. Soon, I will hold you in my arms again.
She ended the letter with a heart and nothing else.
My mother had a lover. She’d hidden her affair from all of us. Although, I could never be sure if my father knew.
I couldn’t ask them. Both my parents died in an accident. I closed my eyes and rubbed them with my thumb and middle finger.
After the anger of my mother’s betrayal ebbed, concern and suspicion rose within me. Did this man have anything to do with their death? We were told it was an accident, but could it have been something else? My father was supposed to go on that business trip alone but somehow convinced my mother to leave us behind and join him.
The thoughts haunted me, and I couldn’t push them away. So, I hired a private investigator to help me figure out who this John person was.
There was no last name in the letter or address. But something in my gut told me he lived in New York state. Maybe even our town. The bit about her asking him to join us… he had to live within the state for her to say something like that, didn’t he?
The phone rang once before the investigator answered. “Hello?”
“It’s Ryan. Just checking in. Have you made any progress?”
“Nothing yet. With only a first name, I have little to go on.”
“I know,” I said, running a hand through my hair. “Just keep trying, okay?” I heard the desperation in my voice and I squashed it. “Even if you have to knock on every door of every man named John in New York state.”
The investigator laughed, as though he thought I was joking. “That would take years and millions of dollars.”
He needed to know I was serious. “I have both,” I reminded him. “I don’t care how long it takes. You need to find him.”
“Mmm,” the investigator murmured. “Then I better get off the phone and start knocking on some doors.”
He hung up and I dropped the phone on my desk and my head in my hands.
Why did I have to find that letter? Why did I have to learn that my mother had lied to us? She had pretended to be this devoted, faithful woman when she wasn’t that at all. My fists clenched and my throat tightened.
You’re not a little boy, Ryan. Get over it.
But I couldn’t. Whenever I thought about her lying to us, keeping this tremendous secret from us—the pain it caused—it was as though she had died all over again. And in a way, for me, she had.
Unclenching my fist, I linked my fingers together and straightened my arms, stretching my muscles. I always got wound up thinking about this. I hadn’t shared it with my brothers yet because I knew it would hurt them as much as it hurt me and I couldn’t do that to them. Not until I had answers. Why ruin our mother’s image and her memory—the only thing we had left of her—when I didn’t even have all the facts yet? No. I would get answers and then I would get revenge. If this man had anything to do with my parent’s accident, he would have to run further than the Tri-state area to get away from me.
I was done thinking about this piece of shit. I directed my thoughts back to work. The mayor. Ugh. He wasn’t any better, but I had to book a meeting with the lying, faithless turd who lived a double life. I would get him to sell that property to Crawford Corporation. Not for Colton. Not for the company, but for me. Because if I had to mete out justice by outing one lousy liar at a time, I’d do it happily.
