Chapter 3 - The Letter That Never Reached Him
The Sullivan Group’s library occupied the room behind the ballroom. It was not really a library, though it contained shelves of expensive books no one seemed to have opened. Tall windows overlooked the city, where Chicago glittered beneath the dark sky.
Ethan stood near the fireplace while we entered.
Lucas remained by the door.
“I’ll be outside,” he said.
I shook my head. “Stay.”
Ethan looked at him, then nodded.
The twins sat together on a leather sofa. I sat across from them. Ethan remained standing, as if he did not believe he had earned a chair.
For a while, nobody spoke.
Then Noah said, “You can start with why you said you never had children.”
Ethan folded his hands.
“After the divorce, I received one letter from your mother.”
I turned toward him.
“What letter?”
His eyes met mine.
“That is the first thing I need to explain.”
My stomach tightened.
“I never sent you a letter.”
“I know.”
“Then what are you talking about?”
“Your mother sent it.”
The room seemed to tilt.
My mother had died six years earlier. We had been estranged for most of my adult life, but she had never mentioned contacting Ethan. She had not even known where I lived after the divorce.
Or at least, I had believed she didn’t.
Ethan walked to a small cabinet and took out a folder.
He carried it toward us but stopped before handing it over.
“The letter arrived three months after our divorce,” he said. “It said you had moved overseas. It said you wanted no contact with me and had begun a new life.”
I stared at him.
“That’s a lie.”
“I know that now.”
“What did it say exactly?”
He opened the folder and removed a photocopy.
The paper was yellowed at the edges.
I recognized the handwriting immediately.
My mother’s.
My heart began to pound.
Ethan handed the page to Lucas, who read it first. His expression changed before he gave it to me.
The letter was short.
Ethan,
Claire has made it clear that she wants nothing more to do with you. She has left the country and will not be returning. Please do not contact her again. Whatever happened between you, respect her decision.
Marianne Sullivan
My fingers trembled.
My mother had signed it.
I read it twice, although the words did not change.
“She wrote this?” I whispered.
“Yes.”
“She knew I was pregnant.”
Ethan’s face tightened.
“Did she?”
My eyes snapped to his.
“What do you mean?”
He hesitated.
“I didn’t know you were pregnant. But the letter included something else.”
He reached into the folder.
“Your mother asked me to send money.”
I stared at him.
“How much?”
“Thirty dollars.”
The room went silent.
Sophie looked at me.
Noah’s mouth tightened.
Ethan continued, “She said you had left without taking anything. She told me to send the money to the apartment so you could afford transportation.”
“You threw it at me.”
His eyes closed.
“I know.”
“She told you to do that?”
“She said you were outside. She said you refused to speak with her and that the money was the only way to make you leave.”
I felt the old rain against my skin.
The apartment door.
The bills in Ethan’s hand.
His voice telling me to disappear.
The memory had always been clear.
But now it contained a question I had never thought to ask.
Why had my mother been there?
Ethan placed another document on the table.
“A week later, I went to your apartment.”
I looked at him.
“You never came.”
“I did. The building manager told me you had moved out.”
“I hadn’t.”
“I know.”
“How?”
“Because I went back again.”
The second visit had never existed in my memory. I had been living in a smaller apartment by then, hiding from everyone, working shifts at a bakery and trying to survive the pregnancy.
Ethan sat down at last.
“I hired someone to find you,” he said. “Not a private investigator at first. Just a relocation service. They found no current address.”
“You’re a billionaire,” Lucas said. “You could have found me.”
“I wasn’t a billionaire then.”
“That isn’t an answer.”
Ethan looked toward the window.
“No. It isn’t.”
I could feel anger returning, steady and familiar.
“You could have gone to the courthouse.”
“I did.”
“Then you could have asked for the divorce records.”
“I did.”
“Then why didn’t you find me?”
His answer came quietly.
“Because your mother told me you had suffered a miscarriage.”
The words struck harder than I expected.
Sophie reached for my hand again.
I could not speak.
Ethan continued, “She said you had lost the baby and that the divorce had destroyed you. She said you wanted to forget me completely.”
Noah’s face had gone pale.
I pulled him closer with my free hand.
“That isn’t true,” I said.
“I know.”
“When did you find out?”
“Two years ago.”
My breath caught.
“Two years ago?”
He nodded.
“A journalist was researching your family. She contacted me because she found an old legal filing connected to our divorce. She asked whether I knew you had children.”
I stared at him.
“How did she know?”
“I didn’t ask enough questions at the time. I should have.”
He looked at Noah and Sophie.
“She sent me a photograph from a school website. A science fair. Noah was standing beside a model bridge. Sophie was holding a blue ribbon.”
Sophie blinked. “That was second grade.”
“I know.”
“You saw us?”
“Yes.”
“And you still said you had no children?”
Ethan’s face crumpled slightly.
“I didn’t know if I was allowed to claim you.”
Noah leaned forward.
“That doesn’t make sense. Either we’re your children or we aren’t.”
“You’re right.”
“Did you try to find us?”
“I did.”
“Did you try hard?”
Ethan looked at him for a long moment.
“Not hard enough.”
The honesty seemed to unsettle Noah more than an excuse would have.
Ethan placed both hands on his knees.
“I found your school. I found your mother’s name. I learned where you lived.”
“Then why didn’t you come?” I asked.
He looked at me.
“Because I was afraid.”
I almost laughed, but there was no humor in me.
“You were afraid?”
“Yes.”
“Of what?”
“That you would hate me. That I would disturb your lives. That you would ask why I had waited so long.”
“You had no trouble speaking about us on television.”
His eyes lowered.
“The interview was arranged to promote the foundation. The question about family wasn’t supposed to be included.”
“But you answered it.”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
He looked at the children.
“Because I had been telling myself that if I didn’t call myself a father, then I wasn’t lying when I said I had lost the chance to have a family.”
Noah frowned. “That sounds like a technicality.”
“It was.”
Sophie’s voice softened. “Were you sad?”
Ethan looked at her.
“Every day.”
“Then why didn’t you just say that?”
“Because sadness is easier to show people than responsibility.”
No one answered.
Outside, traffic moved along the streets below. Headlights swept across the windows like brief, passing stars.
Lucas opened the folder again.
“There’s more,” he said.
Ethan’s expression changed.
“What do you mean?”
Lucas removed a document and placed it beside the letter.
“This arrived at my office three days ago.”
I looked down.
It was a copy of a bank transfer.
Thirty dollars.
The date was ten years earlier.
The sender was listed as Ethan Sullivan.
The recipient was an account belonging to my mother.
I stared at the page.
“You sent the money to her?”
Ethan nodded. “She told me to send it to you. I thought she had given it to you.”
“She kept it.”
“I didn’t know.”
Lucas tapped the document. “There’s another transfer. Six months later.”
Ethan leaned forward.
“That one was for support.”
My head lifted.
“You sent child support?”
“I sent money to the account your mother provided. I was told it was being used for medical expenses.”
My hands had gone cold.
“How much?”
Lucas answered.
“Five thousand dollars.”
I looked at Ethan.
“You knew about the pregnancy?”
“No. I believed your mother’s statement that you had lost the baby.”
“Then why send support?”
“Because she wrote that you were ill and unable to work.”
I shook my head.
None of it fit.
My mother had told me she had never spoken to Ethan after the divorce.
She had told me he had not cared.
She had told me the only thing he had sent was thirty dollars.
For ten years, I had believed her.
Ethan reached into the folder one final time.
“There is something else,” he said.
He placed a sealed envelope on the table.
The handwriting on it was mine.
I knew it instantly.
My name was written across the front in the hurried, uneven script I had used during pregnancy.
I looked at Ethan.
“Where did you get that?”
“I found it in my mother’s effects after she died.”
His mother.
The woman who had pressured me into signing the divorce agreement.
The woman who had said Ethan’s future could not be burdened by a pregnant wife.
The woman who had promised that if I disappeared, Ethan would be free to build the life he deserved.
Ethan’s voice dropped.
“It was addressed to me.”
I could not move.
“What does it say?”
“I don’t know.”
“Why not?”
“Because I never opened it.”
He pushed the envelope toward me.
“There’s a postmark from ten years ago. It was never delivered.”
My name was on the return address.
Claire Sullivan.
The letter had been written after I left.
Before the twins were born.
My fingers hovered above the seal.
Sophie leaned against my shoulder.
Noah looked from the envelope to Ethan.
“Why bring it tonight?”
Ethan’s eyes held mine.
“Because I think it may explain what happened to all of us.”
I picked up the envelope.
On the back, beneath the flap, was a faint line of ink.
A sentence I had written and forgotten.
May you like
Ethan, if you ever find this, you need to know that our children are alive.
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