Chapter 2: What the Envelope Held
Part 2 ⬇️
Grant's voice dropped low enough that only those closest to him could hear.
"Were they mine the whole time?"
I didn't answer right away.
I let the question sit in the air where everyone could feel it.
Then I opened the envelope.
The paternity report was on top.
I held it out to him.
Grant's hands were shaking when he took it.
Vanessa stepped forward.
"Grant, don't—"
"Stop talking." He didn't look at her.
He read the first line.
Then he stopped moving entirely.
Ethan was standing closest to him.
My oldest.
Fifteen years old, with Grant's jaw and Grant's eyes and ten years of a father who never came looking.
Grant looked up from the paper and stared at his son for the first time.
"I didn't know," he said.
"You didn't ask," I answered.
That was when a woman I didn't recognize pushed through the crowd.
Older.
Gray hair.
Dressed in black.
She looked at the report in Grant's hands, then at me, then at the children.
And she started to cry.
Not from sadness.
From something that looked like relief.
Grant turned to her.
"Aunt Clara?
What do you—"
"I knew," she said.
"I knew what Vanessa did.
I tried to tell your father." She pressed a hand to her mouth.
"William knew too.
That's why he sent the card."
Vanessa went completely still.
The envelope in my hand wasn't empty yet.
---
What did William Whitmore know — and what else is inside that envelope?
The full truth is more shocking than anyone at that funeral expected.
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