Chapter 2 - THE WOMAN IN THE PHOTOGRAPH
I almost said nothing.
Not because I didn’t know the answer.
Because I had spent my entire childhood learning that my mother’s past was a locked room.
“Margaret,” I finally said.
Ernest’s fingers tightened around the arm of his chair.
“Margaret what?”
“Margaret Hale.”
The whiskey glass slipped slightly in his hand.
He set it down.
Carefully.
Too carefully.
“What?”
“My mother’s name was Margaret Hale.”
Ernest stared at the photograph.
Then at me.
“When was she born?”
“1952.”
“Where?”
“Connecticut.”
His breathing changed.
I stood.
“Mr. Walker, what is this?”
He didn’t answer.
I picked up the photograph.
The woman was perhaps twenty-five.
Her dark hair fell over one shoulder.
She wore a white summer dress.
Behind her was a lake.
On the back of the frame, someone had written a date.
June 1977.
I was born in February 1978.
My stomach tightened.
“Who is she?”
Ernest looked at me.
“Margaret.”
The room seemed to tilt.
“No.”
“Yes.”
“That can’t be my mother.”
“It is.”
I sat down without meaning to.
My mother had died twelve years earlier.
Cancer took her in seven months.
During those final months, I asked questions I had been afraid to ask my entire life.
Who was my father?
Why had she raised me alone?
Why did we move so often when I was young?
Every answer was the same.
“It doesn’t matter anymore.”
Apparently, it did.
“How did you know her?”
Ernest leaned back.
For the first time since I had met him, he looked eighty.
“I loved her.”
I stared at him.
He continued slowly.
“We met in 1975. She worked in the accounting department of my father’s company.”
“Were you married?”
“No.”
“Was she?”
“No.”
“Then what happened?”
Pain moved across his face.
“My father.”
Ernest’s father, Charles Walker, had been legendary even in death.
Brilliant.
Ruthless.
Obsessed with family reputation.
Ernest had been expected to marry Catherine Bellamy, daughter of another wealthy family.
Margaret Hale was a secretary’s daughter from Bridgeport.
Charles considered her unacceptable.
“He offered her money to leave me,” Ernest said.
“Did she take it?”
“I thought she did.”
Something about the way he said it made my skin prickle.
“What do you mean?”
“She disappeared.”
“Just disappeared?”
“She left her apartment. Quit her job. Changed her number.”
“And you never found her?”
“I tried.”
He stood and walked toward a locked cabinet.
Inside were bundles of old letters tied with string.
Dozens.
Every envelope had been returned unopened.
“I wrote for two years.”
I touched one.
The address was familiar.
It was the street where my grandmother had lived.
But there was something strange about the postmarks.
Several letters had never reached Connecticut.
They had been returned directly from Ernest’s family office.
“Who handled your mail?”
He looked at the envelopes.
Then his expression changed.
“My father’s secretary.”
My phone vibrated again.
Richard.
I ignored it.
For the first time, my husband’s anger wasn’t the most frightening thing in the room.
I looked at the date on the photograph.
Then at Ernest.
“Mr. Walker…”
He already knew what I was going to ask.
“If you and my mother were together in June 1977…”
He closed his eyes.
May you like
I finished anyway.
“Is it possible you’re my father?”
