Chapter 4 - THE NINTH LETTER
Ethan did not raise his voice.
That frightened me more.
“You saw one of Anna’s letters?”
Victoria looked at him.
“Yes.”
“When?”
“Last year.”
The room changed.
Not seven years ago.
Last year.
After she was already with Ethan.
After they had begun discussing marriage.
“You knew?” I asked.
“No.”
Her answer came quickly.
“I knew there was an envelope.”
“That isn’t what I asked.”
Victoria’s shoulders stiffened.
“I never opened it.”
Ethan stared at her.
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Because it was in my father’s private desk.”
“That doesn’t answer me.”
She finally looked angry.
“My father could barely feed himself after his stroke. I was cleaning out medical bills, business records, thirty years of his life. I found an envelope addressed to you in a locked drawer.”
“And you left it there?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Because I assumed it was old business.”
I laughed.
She turned toward me.
“You can believe me or not.”
“I don’t know you well enough to believe anything.”
That landed.
Victoria looked away.
Richard asked the practical question.
“Is the envelope still there?”
“I think so.”
“Then we go get it.”
Victoria’s eyes flashed.
“You are not going through my father’s house like investigators.”
Richard remained calm.
“I am asking you to retrieve something addressed to my son.”
For several seconds, Victoria said nothing.
Then she looked at Ethan.
He did not rescue her.
Finally she nodded.
“I’ll get it.”
“No,” Ethan said.
“We go together.”
An hour later, I was standing in a beautiful Lincoln Park townhouse I had never imagined entering.
Noah was with Richard in the sitting room, where an old wooden chess set had already distracted him.
I followed Ethan and Victoria upstairs.
Graham Hale’s study looked frozen in another decade.
Dark shelves.
Family photographs.
A silver letter opener.
A framed photograph of Victoria at college graduation.
Nothing about the room looked criminal.
That mattered to me.
For seven years, I had imagined whoever destroyed my life as someone obviously cruel.
But rooms do not reveal people so easily.
Victoria unlocked a desk drawer.
Inside sat a cedar box.
She opened it.
There was my handwriting.
ETHAN.
The ninth letter.
My knees weakened.
Ethan reached toward it, then stopped.
“Anna?”
I nodded.
He opened it.
Inside was a second copy of the ultrasound photograph.
And a letter.
I remembered this one.
I had written it the night after my doctor told me the baby was healthy.
Ethan read silently.
His jaw tightened.
Then he handed it to me.
The paper shook in my hands.
Ethan,
I don’t care about the money anymore.
I care that you believe I could do this.
I am ten weeks pregnant.
You deserve to know that even if you never forgive me.
Please meet me.
Please ask me yourself.
Please don’t let your family decide what I am before you hear me.
Anna.
I had forgotten the last line.
Reading it now felt like hearing the younger version of myself begging from another room.
Ethan turned away.
Victoria stood beside the desk, pale.
“I swear I never read it.”
Ethan faced her.
“But you knew it existed.”
“Yes.”
“You were engaged to me.”
“I know.”
“And you never thought an envelope addressed to me inside your father’s locked desk mattered?”
Her voice broke.
“My father had just had another seizure. I was trying to decide whether to put him into full-time care. Not every decision I made was perfect.”
For the first time, she sounded less like Ethan Blackwood’s polished fiancée and more like a daughter who had been drowning.
I could understand that without excusing her.
Richard called from downstairs.
“Ethan.”
Something in his voice made us move.
We found him standing beside a large framed photograph in the hall.
Noah was at the chessboard.
Richard pointed to the photograph.
A Blackwood manufacturing plant.
Hundreds of employees stood outside beneath a banner.
BLACKWOOD LAKES PLANT — 75 YEARS.
Graham Hale stood beside Richard.
Marian Blackwood stood between them.
Ethan frowned.
“What?”
Richard looked at the date.
March 2019.
The same month I had been accused.
“The Lakes plant almost failed that spring.”
Ethan slowly nodded.
“I remember.”
“How close?”
“Very.”
Victoria came down the stairs.
Her face changed when she saw the photograph.
“My father said payroll was in danger.”
Richard looked at her.
“How much?”
She hesitated.
“I don’t know.”
“Think.”
“My mother said he needed almost half a million dollars by Friday.”
Nobody spoke.
My skin went cold.
Ethan said the number.
“Four hundred eighty-six thousand?”
Victoria closed her eyes.
“I don’t know.”
But she did.
At least enough.
Richard looked sick.
“The money Anna was accused of stealing may never have been stolen for personal gain.”
Ethan understood.
“It may have covered payroll.”
Richard nodded.
Victoria shook her head.
“That plant employed more than four hundred people.”
I stared at her.
“So that makes using my name acceptable?”
“No.”
She turned toward me immediately.
“No.”
Her face tightened.
“But if my father moved that money, I need you to understand why he might have believed he was saving people.”
“I spent seven years raising a child alone because someone needed to save a company.”
“I said it wasn’t acceptable.”
Noah appeared in the doorway.
“Mom?”
I stopped.
He carried a small plastic dinosaur Richard had found somewhere.
“Can we go home soon?”
“Yes.”
He nodded.
Then he looked at Ethan.
Again.
Ethan tried to smile.
Noah hid his left hand behind his back.
Exactly the way Ethan did in Richard’s photograph.
Ethan saw it.
His face almost broke.
Before anyone could speak, a movement came from the hallway.
A nurse pushed a wheelchair toward us.
Graham Hale sat beneath a gray blanket.
He was thinner than his photographs.
Older.
One side of his face remained weak from the stroke.
Victoria rushed toward him.
“Dad, you should be resting.”
Graham ignored her.
His eyes found me.
He stared.
His breathing changed.
Then he saw the ninth letter in my hand.
His good hand began to shake.
Victoria knelt beside him.
“Dad?”
He tried to speak.
Only a rough sound emerged.
Richard crouched.
“Graham.”
The old man looked at him.
“Did you move the money?”
Graham’s eyes filled.
His hand lifted.
Not toward Richard.
Toward the photograph of the plant.
Richard brought him a writing pad.
It took nearly a minute for Graham to control the pen.
He wrote one word.
PAYROLL.
Victoria covered her mouth.
Richard asked, “Who told you to use Anna’s account?”
Graham’s eyes moved toward me.
Then toward Ethan.
He struggled with the pen again.
M.
The next letters came slowly.
A.
R.
I.
A.
N.
Marian.
Ethan’s mother.
The woman who had once hugged me and told me I was good for her son.
The woman who had died four years ago with Ethan still believing I was a thief.
Graham’s hand shook harder.
I stepped closer.
“Why me?”
His eyes filled.
For a moment I thought he would stop.
Then his pen returned to the paper.
One word.
BABY.
Ethan looked at me.
Richard looked at his old friend.
Victoria whispered, “What does that mean?”
But I already knew enough to be afraid of the answer.
May you like
Marian Blackwood had known I was pregnant.
And whatever happened seven years ago had never been only about money.
