Chapter 5 - The Letter My Mother Never Saw
I spent the next morning trying not to make a conclusion faster than the evidence deserved.
There were two signatures on the delivery record. One belonged to the courier. The other said P. HALE. Patrick and I hadn't met until Mia was four. Six years earlier he'd been an associate in a Savannah real estate office. He sometimes worked in the neighborhood, but why would he have been accepting mail at my mother's house?
We took Mia to the park. Lydia warned me that a name on a delivery screen was weak proof, and she wanted the original records before anyone confronted Patrick. I agreed.
At the playground, she climbed halfway up the rope ladder and shouted, “Can my new dad come see me climb?”
The phrase made me turn.
“Which dad do you mean, sweetheart?”
She considered. “Marcello. Patrick already knows I can.”
“Marcello might visit us soon, if we can arrange a quiet place.”
“Does Patrick know?”
“He knows we're talking to him.”
“Is everybody mad because I drew the picture?”
I knelt so we were eye to eye. “No. The grown-ups made choices before you were born, and we're trying to correct some of them. Your picture helped us start talking. It didn't cause the problem.”
Mia nodded, but she held the rope with both hands and did not climb higher.
That afternoon Lydia received the company's response. A copy of Marcello's letter was attached to an old service file. It had been addressed correctly, but the delivery receipt displayed Patrick's name. A separate note, signed by Rusk, instructed the courier to leave it with an “authorized family representative.” I had never authorized anybody.
Lydia read it twice. “That phrase may have been used to justify leaving the letter with someone other than the addressee. We need the original service records, and we need to know whether the signature was genuine.”
“Patrick couldn't have been planning to marry me then.”
“No. That's why we shouldn't make the current story fit the old paperwork without checking.”
I took a breath. “I wish everyone had been that careful six years ago.”
Lydia explained the test procedure. A certified laboratory would collect cheek swabs with identity verification and chain-of-custody records. Because I was Mia's legal parent, I could consent for her sample; Marcello agreed to provide his. We didn't treat the outcome as decided, even though we both knew what we expected.
“I won't ask for immediate overnight visits,” he said. “I know I have to earn her trust.”
“That matters,” Lydia said. “So does how you behave if the result confirms paternity.”
“I'll follow her lead.”
I wanted to believe him. I wanted to be able to believe anyone without checking what they had hidden.
When Lydia left to print a form, Marcello looked at me. “Your mother didn't lie. I saw the records of when the letter was intercepted. Rusk could have had somebody sign for it.”
“Or Patrick could have.”
“We'll find out.”
“Then why are you looking so angry?”
“Because I spent six years telling myself you rejected me. I made a whole life out of that excuse.”
He turned the crayon between his fingers. “At first I tried to find you. Then I got tired of being hurt and stopped. I told myself it was respecting your wishes. Maybe it was cowardice.”
I didn't reach across the table. But I stopped arguing.
That evening Patrick asked to meet me at a café near the river. I went with Celia at the next table and told him I would not discuss anything he wanted kept from Lydia.
He brought no wedding pictures. Just a paper bag containing Mia's favorite stuffed seal, which she'd left in her room.
“I don't want her to think I vanished,” he said.
“She doesn't. She misses you.”
His eyes filled. “I miss her.”
I showed him the delivery record without handing him my phone. He stared at the name.
“That's not my signature.”
“You told me you've been working with Rusk since January. Were you working with him six years ago?”
“No.” He pushed his chair back, then sat again. “My boss handled properties for Salvatore's company then. Sometimes I delivered paperwork, but I swear to you I didn't intercept a letter.”
“Who was your boss?”
“Graham Ellis. He died three years ago.”
His answer might have been true. The fact that it was possible did not forgive his more recent secrecy.
“Patrick, tell me everything you signed this year.”
“I signed a confidentiality agreement with Rusk's agency. That's all.”
“Did he pay you?”
“No.”
He said it too quickly.
I reached into my bag for the photo of Marcello outside my mother's house. On the back was the security company's invoice number. I'd called the bank that morning to verify a separate charge on our shared household card.
May you like
“Then why,” I asked, “did the security company refund you forty-eight thousand dollars?”
Patrick stared at the photograph. Finally he said, “Because I told them I couldn't do what they wanted.”
