Grant was waiting when I arrived at his apartment.
He had already made coffee.
Two cups sat on the kitchen counter.
Neither of us touched them.
I placed my keys on the table and sat down.
Grant stood opposite me.
He looked as though he had been preparing himself for this conversation for years.
"Tell me everything again."
I repeated what I had heard.
This time, I paid attention to the details.
Gwendolyn had said we believed everything she told us.
Grandma Opal had questioned whether we deserved to know.
Raymond had apparently disagreed with something Gwendolyn had done.
And there was something they had hidden for twenty years.
Grant listened without interrupting.
When I finished, he pulled out a chair.
"There's something I never told you."
I looked at him.
"What?"
"When Dad was alive, I heard him arguing with Mom."
"About what?"
"I don't know everything. I was little."
Grant rubbed his forehead.
"It happened one night when I was about eight."
I tried to remember.
He continued.
"I had woken up because I heard shouting downstairs. I went to the top of the stairs."
"What did you hear?"
"Mom telling Dad that he needed to stop asking questions."
I leaned forward.
"Questions about us?"
"I think so."
Grant looked down at the table.
"Then Dad said something about a promise."
A promise.
The same word Grandma Opal had used.
"What kind of promise?"
"I couldn't hear clearly. But I remember Mom saying that the two of us would never find out."
I felt a chill move through my arms.
"Why didn't you tell me?"
Grant looked at me.
"Because I was afraid."
He didn't try to make the answer sound better.
Neither did I.
We had both been afraid of Gwendolyn.
We had simply handled it differently.
I had become agreeable.
Grant had become distant.
Neither of us had understood what was happening.
"Do you remember the photograph?" I asked.
He nodded.
"I remember Dad holding it once."
"Was it one of us?"
"I don't think so."
"Why?"
"Because I remember him saying a name."
"What name?"
Grant hesitated.
"I couldn't remember it for years. But after hearing what you told me, something came back."
He closed his eyes.
Then he said a woman's name.
"Elizabeth."
The name meant nothing to me.
I repeated it quietly.
"Elizabeth."
Grant nodded.
"I think Dad said he wished Elizabeth could see how we were growing."
I stared at him.
"Who was she?"
"I don't know."
We sat in silence.
The name seemed to hang between us.
I thought about the story we had been told.
Our biological mother had abandoned us.
We had supposedly been left behind, with nobody willing to return for us.
But if that was true, why had Raymond kept a photograph connected to another woman?
Why had he mentioned her with such tenderness?
And why had Gwendolyn been so determined to remove it?
I got up and walked toward Grant's living room.
He had a bookshelf filled with old family photographs and a few boxes of things he had kept from childhood.
"Do you still have anything from the old house?"
"Some things."
"Could the photograph be here?"
Grant shook his head.
"I looked through these boxes years ago. I didn't find it."
He opened a cupboard and pulled out a plastic storage container.
Inside were school certificates, birthday cards, and old photographs.
I recognized several immediately.
There was one of Raymond holding two small bicycles.
Another showed Grant and me sitting on the living room carpet.
We looked happy.
Raymond was smiling behind us.
Gwendolyn stood in the background.
She wasn't smiling.
I picked up the photograph.
"Look at her."
Grant examined it.
"I've seen it before."
"She looks angry."
"She usually did."
I placed it back.
Then I noticed something underneath a stack of birthday cards.
A small envelope.
It was yellow with age.
There was no stamp.
No address.
Only two words written across the front.
For my boys.
I turned it over.
The envelope was sealed.
Grant moved closer.
"Where did that come from?"
"I don't know."
I recognized the handwriting immediately.
Raymond.
My fingers began trembling.
I carefully opened the envelope.
Inside was a folded piece of paper.
The handwriting was uneven in places.
It looked like something written quickly.
I unfolded it.
There were only a few sentences.
My dear boys,
There are things about the beginning of your lives that I wish I could explain to you.
I hope one day you will understand why I kept asking questions.
You deserve to know where you came from.
You deserve to know that you were wanted.
I couldn't read the next line.
My eyes had filled with tears.
Grant took the paper from me.
He read it silently.
Then he looked up.
"Where did you get this?"
"It was in the box."
He turned the envelope over again.
There was something written inside the folded flap.
A date.
It was from the year before Raymond died.
I sat down.
For the first time, I felt as though Raymond had been trying to leave us a message.
But why had he never finished it?
And why had Gwendolyn never given it to us?
Grant read the letter again.
"You deserve to know that you were wanted."
He repeated those words quietly.
Then he looked at me.
"Maybe Mom lied about our biological mother."
I wanted to disagree.
I wanted to tell him there had to be another explanation.
But I couldn't.
Not after what I had heard.
Not after seeing Raymond's handwriting.
I picked up my phone.
I called Gwendolyn.
She answered on the fourth ring.
"Wesley?"
I took a breath.
"Did Dad leave anything for us?"
There was silence.
"What are you talking about?"
"A letter."
Another pause.
"What letter?"
I looked at Grant.
He shook his head slightly.
I decided not to tell her about the envelope.
"I was going through some old things."
"Why are you digging through the past?"
"Because I have questions."
Her voice became cold.
"About what?"
I looked at the letter again.
"About our adoption."
She didn't answer.
Then she said something that confirmed more than she probably intended.
"Your father should have stayed out of that."
My hand tightened around the phone.
"What does that mean?"
"Nothing."
"Mom, what did Dad know?"
"Don't start this, Wesley."
I had never heard her sound so uncomfortable.
I waited.
She sighed.
"You and Grant have had a good life. Why can't you leave things alone?"
I looked at the letter.
A good life.
Was that supposed to be the end of the conversation?
"Because I don't know whether anything you told us was true."
She hung up.
I stared at the phone.
Grant was standing beside me.
He had heard everything.
Neither of us spoke for a while.
Then he reached across the table and picked up Raymond's letter.
"We're not leaving this alone."
For once, I didn't ask him to be careful.
I agreed.
Click here to continue reading: PART 4: The More We Examined Our Father’s Last Message, the More His Silence Began to Look Like a Warning
I Thought Bringing Her Birthday Flowers Might Finally Make Her See Me as Her Son
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