Chapter 4: The Letter That Should Have Been Burned
The room that the hotel manager offered them was small and plain — a staff sitting room off the main corridor, two sofas, a low table, a window overlooking the service entrance.
Nothing like the ballroom they had just left.
Mei sat on one sofa.
Daniel sat across from her.
Victor stood near the door, his hands in his pockets, his eyes on the floor.
Outside, they could hear the murmur of guests being gently redirected by the hotel staff.
Someone — Mei's maid of honor, probably — had made a decision and was handling it.
The wedding coordinator's voice carried faintly through the wall, calm and professional, the voice of someone managing a situation she had never trained for.
Mei set the envelope on the table between them.
None of them touched it immediately.
**"You knew,"** Daniel said to Victor.
**"You knew all of this and you stayed quiet."**
**"I was afraid,"** Victor said.
**"Eleanor was not a woman you crossed lightly.
I had a family.
I made a choice I'm not proud of."** He looked up.
**"I've had thirty years to be not proud of it."**
**"What changed?"** Mei asked.
**"I got a letter myself.
Eight months ago."** Victor reached into his jacket again and produced a second envelope, smaller, already opened.
**"From your father.
He found me instead of you.
He asked me to come forward."** He paused.
**"He's ill.
He doesn't have much time.
He wanted you found before —"** He stopped.
Mei picked up the envelope from the table.
She turned it over.
Her name was written on the front in careful, deliberate handwriting.
*Mei.* Just that.
As if whoever wrote it had been certain, somehow, that she would eventually be the one holding it.
She opened it.
The letter was three pages, handwritten, the ink slightly faded at the edges.
She read it without speaking.
Daniel watched her face.
Victor watched the window.
Halfway through the second page, her hand went flat on the paper.
**"His name is Robert Calloway,"** she said.
**"He was Eleanor's business partner.
Thirty years ago."**
Daniel's head came up.
**"Calloway.
The Calloway Group?"**
**"You know it?"**
**"Eleanor merged with them eight years ago.
It was the biggest deal she ever made."** Daniel's voice had gone strange.
**"She always said it was purely business.
That she and Robert Calloway had a professional relationship going back decades."**
Mei set the letter down on the table so Daniel could see the page she was on.
He read it.
His jaw tightened.
**"He says he loved her,"** Daniel said.
**"He says she told him the baby d*ed,"** Mei said.
**"He believed her for twenty years.
Then he started to wonder.
He hired someone to look."**
**"And Eleanor shut it down."**
**"Yes."**
They sat with that for a moment.
**"He wants to meet me,"** Mei said.
**"That's what the letter is.
He's asking if I'm willing."**
**"Are you?"**
She looked at the pendant in her palm.
She had been holding it the entire time without realizing it.
**"I don't know yet,"** she said honestly.
Victor spoke from the doorway.
**"There's something else you should know.
The reason I came today — the reason Robert asked me to come — is that Eleanor knows he's been looking again.
She found out six weeks ago."** He paused.
**"She moved the wedding date up by three months."**
Daniel went very still.
**"She moved it up,"** he repeated slowly.
**"She told you it was the venue availability,"** Victor said.
**"It wasn't.
She wanted the marriage completed before Robert could make contact.
Before any of this could surface."**
The silence that followed was the kind that rearranges things.
Daniel stood up.
He walked to the window and stood there with his back to the room, looking out at the service entrance, the delivery trucks, the ordinary afternoon outside.
**"She wasn't trying to stop the wedding because she disapproved of Mei,"** he said.
**"No,"** Victor said.
**"She was trying to complete it.
Quickly.
So that once Mei was legally family, any claim she might make — any legal question about inheritance, about the estate, about what Robert Calloway might leave her —"**
**"Would be complicated,"** Victor said.
**"Managed.
Controlled."**
Daniel turned around.
**"She used me,"** he said.
**"She used both of us."**
Mei looked at him.
**"Daniel."**
**"She adopted me to fill a hole she made herself.
She moved my wedding date to protect her assets.
She —"** He stopped.
He pressed the back of his hand against his mouth for a moment.
**"How much of my life was real?"**
**"You are real,"** Mei said.
**"What you feel is real.
What she did doesn't change who you are."**
He looked at her — this woman he had chosen, this woman his mother had torn a dress from, this woman who was, impossibly, the sister he never knew he had lost.
**"We can't get married,"** he said quietly.
**"No,"** she agreed.
Just as quietly.
They looked at each other across the table with the letter between them, and something passed between them that was not romantic love but was not less than it either.
It was the recognition of two people who had been shaped by the same wound, from different sides, without ever knowing it.
**"What do we do now?"** Daniel asked.
Mei picked up the letter again.
She folded it carefully and placed it back in the envelope.
**"First,"** she said, **"I think we should find out exactly what Eleanor is planning to do next."**
As if in answer, Daniel's phone buzzed on the table.
He looked at the screen.
A text from Eleanor's personal assistant: *Mrs.
May you like
Whitmore has left the building.
She asked me to inform you that the family attorney has been contacted.*
