Chapter 6 - THE MAN I THOUGHT ABANDONED ME
Michael Reyes arrived in Atherton the next afternoon.
Emily watched his rental car stop outside the gate.
For thirty-six years, she had remembered him at twenty-four.
Black hair falling over his forehead.
Grease beneath his fingernails from working at his uncle’s garage.
A laugh that made waitresses smile.
The man who walked toward her door was sixty.
His hair was mostly silver.
He wore a brown jacket and moved carefully on one knee.
Emily opened the door.
Neither spoke.
Michael looked at her face.
Then his eyes filled.
“Hi, Em.”
Nobody had called her that way in decades.
Grant shortened her name sometimes.
Emily hated it when he did.
From Michael, it was a room opening.
She stepped aside.
Noah came down the stairs.
Michael hugged him.
Not awkwardly.
Not like two men who had met at a funeral.
Like family.
Emily watched.
“You’ve known him a while.”
Michael released Noah.
“Five years.”
Emily looked at Noah.
He nodded.
“My mom found him through DNA.”
“Why didn’t either of you contact me?”
Michael’s expression changed.
“Grace wanted to.”
“Then why didn’t she?”
He looked toward the study.
“Grant.”
Grant had left for the San Francisco condo that morning after Emily told him she needed him out of the house.
He had gone without arguing.
That was the least he could do.
Michael sat across from Emily in the family room.
Clara slept beside them.
Noah hovered near the kitchen.
“Tell me everything.”
Michael took a breath.
He came to St. Agnes the morning after Grace was born.
Eleanor met him in the lobby.
“She told me the baby died.”
Emily looked down.
“She told me the same.”
“I asked to see you.”
“She said I had asked not to.”
“I didn’t believe her.”
“What did you do?”
“I tried to go upstairs.”
“Security removed you.”
“Yes.”
“Why didn’t you come back?”
“I did.”
Emily looked up.
“Three times.”
Her throat tightened.
“What happened?”
“Your mother got a restraining order.”
Emily stared.
“For what?”
“She said I threatened you.”
“You never threatened me.”
“I know.”
“Did you fight it?”
“My public defender told me to stay away until a hearing.”
“Public defender?”
Michael laughed bitterly.
“Your mother also accused me of stealing a bracelet from your apartment.”
Emily closed her eyes.
She remembered the bracelet.
A thin diamond tennis bracelet her grandmother gave her.
It had disappeared while she was in the hospital.
Eleanor later said the cleaning service probably took it.
“Did you?”
“No.”
“Were you charged?”
“Never. The bracelet turned up.”
“Where?”
“Your mother’s safe, apparently.”
Emily put a hand over her eyes.
“What happened to the restraining order?”
“Dismissed two months later.”
“Then why didn’t you come back?”
Michael’s face tightened.
“I did.”
He wrote.
Called.
Went to her parents’ house.
Every letter returned.
Every call screened.
Then Eleanor sent him a copy of an engagement announcement.
Emily and Grant.
“I wasn’t engaged yet.”
“I know that now.”
“What year?”
“1995.”
Grant proposed in January 1996.
Emily’s skin went cold.
“My mother fabricated an engagement announcement?”
“It was a clipping layout.”
“Did Grant know?”
Michael looked at her.
“I don’t know then.”
“What do you know?”
“Six weeks before your wedding, I went to his office.”
Emily nodded.
“He told me.”
“He left out part.”
“Which part?”
Michael reached into a folder.
He placed three envelopes on the coffee table.
Emily recognized her own old address.
Her parents’ house in Los Altos Hills.
Each envelope had been returned unopened.
She picked one up.
Across the front, in blue ink:
REFUSED. DO NOT CONTACT AGAIN.
Not her handwriting.
“Who wrote that?”
“I don’t know.”
Michael handed her a fourth envelope.
This one had never been mailed.
“I brought it to Grant.”
Emily looked at him.
“I told him I had found records showing your mother paid Golden Coast after the baby supposedly died.”
“What did he say?”
“That you knew.”
Emily flinched.
“He said you discovered the truth after we broke up and decided leaving Grace with the adoptive family was best.”
“That’s the same lie he told Grace.”
Michael nodded.
“I believed him.”
“Why?”
His eyes filled.
“Because he knew details nobody else should have known.”
“What details?”
“The birth.”
“The adoption.”
“My argument with Eleanor.”
Michael rubbed his hands together.
“I thought if he knew all that, you must have told him.”
Emily looked away.
Grant had built credibility out of secrets he should never have possessed.
“When did Grace find you?”
“Five years ago.”
“How?”
“Ancestry DNA.”
“Did you believe her?”
“Immediately.”
“How?”
Michael smiled sadly.
“She had your face.”
Emily cried.
There was nothing poetic about it.
She bent forward and cried into both hands while the man she once loved sat three feet away, unable to touch her because thirty-six years had made even comfort complicated.
When she could speak again, she asked, “Why didn’t you tell her Grant was lying?”
“I didn’t know he was.”
“When did you find out?”
“Last year.”
“What happened?”
“Grace finally got the hospital relinquishment.”
“The forged one.”
“Yes.”
“She saw Grant’s witness name?”
“She suspected.”
“And?”
“She called me.”
Michael looked toward Noah.
“She said if Grant knew from the beginning, his story to both of us couldn’t be true.”
Emily nodded.
“So she confronted him.”
“Yes.”
“When?”
“February.”
Emily’s chest tightened.
Four months before Grace died.
“What did he say?”
“I don’t know.”
“Noah?”
Noah came closer.
“My mom recorded part of it.”
Emily looked at him.
“Why haven’t you played it?”
“She told me the letter first.”
He took out the phone.
The recording began mid-conversation.
Grant’s voice.
Grace’s.
Grace sounded angry.
“You were there.”
Grant answered, “I was a kid following my father.”
“You were twenty-six.”
Silence.
Grace continued.
“You knew I lived before you married her.”
Grant:
“Yes.”
Emily shut her eyes.
Then Grace asked the question Emily had not yet asked.
“Why the Carters?”
Grant said nothing for nine seconds.
Grace:
“You chose them, didn’t you?”
Emily opened her eyes.
The recording ended.
She stared at Michael.
“No.”
Michael looked sick.
Noah nodded.
“My mom believed he did.”
“Why would Grant choose my daughter’s adoptive parents?”
Noah opened Grace’s folder.
Inside was a photocopy of a Golden Coast intake form.
Prospective adoptive parents:
Thomas and Sarah Carter.
Referral source:
G. Walker.
Emily’s hands went cold.
May you like
Grant had not merely watched her daughter disappear.
He had helped decide where she went.
