“Eleanor asked me to give you this only after her death.”
“Why?”
“Because she wanted you to have a choice about what happened next.”
He opened a folder and removed a photograph.
It showed a younger Eleanor standing beside another woman.
The second woman had short brown hair.
I recognized her immediately.
“Patricia.”
Martin nodded.
“Eleanor Whitcomb was Patricia Mercer’s older sister.”
I stared at him.
“Eleanor told me she had no family.”
“She had no surviving close family when you met her. Patricia died seventeen years ago.”
I looked at the photograph again.
“Why didn’t she tell me?”
“Because she wasn’t sure you would believe her.”
He pushed the envelope toward me.
“Read the letter.”
⸻
The handwriting was neat but slightly uneven.
Dear Nate,
If you’re reading this, then I have finally run out of time.
There is something I should have told you the first day you walked into my room.
I knew who you were.
I recognized your name from a photograph my sister kept for almost twenty years.
Patricia loved you very much, although you probably never understood why.
She spent the last years of her life trying to correct a terrible mistake.
I promised her that if I ever found you, I would tell you the truth.
But when you appeared at the hospice, I was frightened.
Not of you.
Of what the truth might do to you.
I stopped reading.
My hands were shaking.
Martin waited.
I forced myself to continue.
Your mother was a good woman, Nate. Nothing in this letter should make you love her less.
But there is something about the day you were born that you deserve to know.
Caroline Brooks was not your biological mother.
I read that sentence twice.
Then a third time.
The coffee shop seemed to go quiet around me.
