"No," Ernest said quietly. "I don't have much time left."
The sentence should have made me pity him. Instead, it sharpened every question already crowding my mind. I stood beside the fireplace with his letter crushed slightly in my hand while the old clock measured the silence between us.
"How much time?"
"The doctors aren't certain."
"That's convenient."
His eyes lifted.
I immediately regretted the cruelty, but I didn't apologize.
"You paid my mother an amount of money most people in our town won't see in a lifetime. You married a woman forty-eight years younger than you. You bring me here, tell me I owe you nothing, and then casually mention you're dying."
"I wouldn't call it casual."
"Then tell me the part you're avoiding."
Ernest leaned back, looking more tired than defensive.
"What part?"
"The reason."
He remained silent.
I stepped closer.
"Why me?"
There it was. The question beneath all the others.
Why Valerie Harrison?
Why a twenty-year-old girl from a family barely keeping its electricity on? Why someone who had never met him, never worked for him, never belonged to his world?
"You should rest," he said.
I stared at him.
"That's insulting."
"I didn't mean—"
"You don't get to decide when I've heard enough."
He fell silent.
"You knew who I was before Mrs. Josephine ever came to our house."
His gaze shifted.
That tiny movement confirmed it.
"Didn't you?"
"I knew your name."
"How?"
He stood slowly and crossed to a narrow cabinet. His movements were careful, as if every step required calculation.
When he opened the cabinet, I expected medicine.
Instead, he took out a small silver key.
"What is that?"
He turned it between his fingers.
"There are things in this house I've kept for too long."
"That's not an answer."
"No. But answers have consequences."
"I've already married you. I think we're beyond avoiding consequences."
A faint, sad smile appeared.
"You sound like him."
Every muscle in my body tightened.
"Like who?"
The smile disappeared.
He realized what he had said.
I moved toward him.
"Who?"
Nothing.
"You just compared me to someone. Who?"
Ernest closed his hand around the key.
Finally, he said, "Your father."
The room seemed to shift sideways.
I stared at him.
"My dad?"
"Yes."
I heard the fire crack.
Nothing else.
Samuel Harrison had been dead for thirteen years. I could still remember the smell of his work jackets and the way his hands looked after a week on construction sites. I remembered him carrying Caleb as a baby. I remembered his wooden toolbox beneath the stairs.
And Ernest Sullivan had just spoken about him as though he'd known him yesterday.
"How did you know my father?"
Ernest moved toward the window.
"Samuel and I were friends."
"No."
He turned.
"My father never mentioned you."
"That doesn't mean we weren't friends."
"My mother never mentioned you either."
Something hardened in his expression when I said that.
I caught it.
"What?"
"Nothing."
"Stop saying nothing when something is obviously there."
He looked down at the key.
"Your mother had reasons for wanting my name absent from your childhood."
The anger in my chest became something colder.
"Mom knew you."
"Yes."
The word struck harder than I expected.
"At the courthouse?"
"She knew exactly who I was."
I thought of Mom's lowered eyes. Her strange hesitation weeks earlier when I had asked whether she'd known him.
"She lied."
"She was afraid."
"Of you?"
Ernest didn't answer.
That frightened me.
"When Mrs. Josephine came to our house, whose idea was it?"
He looked toward me.
"You sent her."
Again, silence.
"You arranged the whole thing."
"I asked Josephine to contact Helen."
"Why?"
"Because I knew your family was in trouble."
"How?"
He took a breath.
"I kept informed."
The words crawled over my skin.
"For how long?"
"Valerie—"
"How long?"
His answer came almost reluctantly.
"Since you were born."
I backed away.
"You've been watching me my entire life?"
"No."
"That's exactly what you just described."
"I never followed you. I never approached you. I received occasional information."
"From whom?"
"People I trusted."
"Why?"
He looked down.
"Because your mother made me promise I would stay away."
That stopped me.
"Mom told you to stay away from us?"
"Yes."
"When?"
"After your father died."
"Why?"
He hesitated.
"Because of what happened before you were born."
I felt the silver edge of fear beneath my anger.
"What happened?"
Ernest opened his hand.
The small key rested against his palm.
"Downstairs is my study. The second drawer of the desk is locked."
He offered me the key.
I didn't take it immediately.
"What's in the drawer?"
"Something I should have shown you years ago."
"I was a child years ago."
"I know."
"Then what?"
"A photograph."
I took the key.
Its metal was cold.
"Of whom?"
"Your father."
My throat tightened.
"And?"
Ernest looked directly at me.
"Me."
For several seconds I couldn't move.
My father and Ernest Sullivan.
Together.
A photograph old enough to predate every lie I had been raised with.
I turned toward the door.
"Valerie."
I stopped.
His voice had changed.
"If you open that drawer, I cannot make you unknow what you find."
I looked over my shoulder.
"Good."
"You may become angry with your mother."
"I'm already angry with her."
"This is different."
"Why?"
Ernest's eyes filled with a grief I didn't understand.
"Because Helen did not tell you the whole truth about Samuel's death."
The key dug into my palm.
"My father died in a truck accident."
"That is what the report concluded."
"Report?"
"Yes."
The word sounded too deliberate.
"He drove home in a storm. His truck went off the road."
Ernest said nothing.
"Are you telling me that didn't happen?"
"I'm telling you the crash happened."
My heart began hammering.
"Was his death your fault?"
Ernest flinched.
"No."
The answer came quickly.
Then, after a pause, he added, "But there were years when I believed I might have prevented it."
"How?"
He looked suddenly older than sixty-eight.
"Not yet."
I nearly threw the key at him.
Instead, I walked into the hallway.
Behind me, Ernest remained beside the fire.
I descended the stairs alone.
The mansion felt different now. Earlier it had seemed intimidating because it belonged to a rich stranger. Now every dark doorway suggested another secret. The grandfather clock in the foyer ticked loudly enough to follow me down the west corridor.
Ernest's study was at the end.
I opened the door.
The room smelled of leather, paper, and old wood. Books filled two walls. A brass lamp illuminated a massive desk. There were no family portraits, no photographs of smiling children, nothing to suggest Ernest had ever shared the house with anyone.
I crossed to the desk.
Second drawer.
A tiny lock sat beneath the handle.
My fingers trembled as I inserted the key.
Before turning it, I looked toward the open doorway.
Ernest hadn't followed.
I suddenly wanted him to.
Instead, I turned the key.
The lock clicked.
Inside the drawer lay one brown envelope.
Across its front, written by hand, was a name I had not seen written in years.
SAMUEL HARRISON.
My knees weakened.
I sat in Ernest's chair.
For several seconds, I couldn't bring myself to touch the envelope.
Then I remembered my mother telling me Dad had been an ordinary construction worker. I remembered Ernest saying they'd been friends. I remembered the old man's strange recognition when he first saw me.
I opened it.
A photograph slid onto the desk.
My father stood on the left.
Young.
Strong.
Smiling.
Beside him stood Ernest Sullivan, decades younger, one arm thrown around Dad's shoulders.
Behind them rose the unfinished frame of a commercial building.
At the bottom someone had written two names.
SULLIVAN & HARRISON.
My breath stopped.
My father hadn't worked for Ernest Sullivan.
He had stood beside him.
Whatever their history was, they had once built something together.
And my mother had spent thirteen years making sure I never knew.
Click Here to continue read next: PART4: The Photograph Proved My Father Had Owned Half the Company, but the Hidden Account Revealed a Far More Dangerous Debt
The Morning My Mother Asked Me to Save Our Family by Marrying a Stranger Old Enough to Be My Grandfather
Part 3 of 16
