those words.”
It turned out Evelyn had preserved both her original letter and my alleged reply for decades. Years after the incident, Brandon had finally confessed to her that he had secretly intercepted her letter to me and forged my cold rejection letter himself so she would give up on our family forever.
For illustration purposes only
However, the very next line of Evelyn’s narrative completely destroyed any sudden sympathy that revelation might have created. “I eventually discovered that the rejection letter was a complete fake nine years ago,” Harper read aloud.
Abigail stood up from her chair in disbelief. “Nine years ago? She knew the truth nine whole years ago?”
Harper kept reading the painful words. “By the time I discovered the truth, you girls were already twelve years old. I had already missed your first words, your first days of school, scraped knees, Christmas mornings, and twelve full birthdays. I convinced myself that returning after so long would only cause you immense emotional pain, which was partly true. But mostly, I was an absolute coward.”
Chloe looked down at the floor in silent anger. Evelyn had indeed been cruelly deceived by Brandon at first, but once she discovered the truth, she had consciously chosen to remain completely silent herself.
There was one final sentence written on that page. “By then, I was no longer afraid that your father would turn me away. I was terrified that my own daughters would reject me.”
For several long seconds, nobody in the bank vault said a single word. Then Abigail took the paper from Harper’s hands. “So she knew everything back then,” Abigail said in a completely flat voice. “Nine years ago, she discovered that Dad had never told her to stay away from us.”
