The words blurred as tears filled my eyes.
I dug deeper and found a letter in Daniel’s handwriting.
I opened another.
He called the woman “Caroline” and revealed he wasn’t going to leave the kids and me, that he loved us and Ava, whom he wouldn’t abandon financially, but he couldn’t give her what she was asking for.
I pressed the paper against my chest.
He didn’t leave us. But he’d lied daily.
Then I discovered printed bank transfers. They were monthly payments for years.
I grabbed one of the envelopes that looked like the one in the box on Caleb’s bed.
He’d lied daily.
“Claire,
I told myself it was temporary. That I could fix it before you ever had to know.
I was wrong.
Ava didn’t ask to be born into my failure. I cannot leave her with nothing.
The bigger key is for a safety deposit box at our bank. There are family heirlooms you can keep or sell.
I know I don’t deserve your forgiveness, but I am asking for your mercy. Please meet her. Please help her if you can. It is the last thing I cannot fix myself.”
“I told myself it was temporary.”
I sat back against a box of Christmas decorations and stared at the beams overhead.
Daniel hadn’t confessed because he wanted the truth to come out; he did it because he was dying. Because he knew he wouldn’t be there to send the next check, and his secret would collapse without him.
I felt anger rising through my grief.
“You don’t get to make this my responsibility! You don’t get to die and leave me riddles!” I shouted into the attic.
Footsteps creaked below.
“You don’t get to die and leave me riddles!”
