PART 2
Grandpa pressed both hands against his face.
For the first time in my life, the man who had always seemed unbreakable looked terrified.
Not sad.
Not confused.
Terrified.
I stood frozen beside Nora’s bassinet, my hospital bag still hanging from my shoulder.
“Grandpa,” I said slowly. “Start talking.”
He looked toward the driveway.
Then toward the road beyond our property.
It was such a strange movement that I followed his gaze.
There was nobody there.
Just the empty country road, the maple trees, and the late-afternoon sunlight stretching across the grass.
But Grandpa kept watching.
“Did anyone follow you here?” he asked.
My skin prickled.
“What?”
“From the hospital.”
“No.”
“Are you sure?”
“I think so. Why would anyone follow me?”
Instead of answering, Grandpa stood and walked to the porch steps.
He stared down the road for another few seconds before turning back.
“Bring Nora inside.”
“Grandpa—”
“Please.”
Something in his voice stopped me.
I picked up the bassinet.
Grandpa grabbed my bag and hurried me through the front door.
Then he locked it.
Not just the deadbolt.
He slid the old brass chain into place too.
I had not seen him use that chain since I was a teenager.
“Grandpa, you’re scaring me.”
“I know.”
“Then tell me what’s happening.”
He closed the curtains.
Every single one.
Living room.
Kitchen.
Even the little window beside the front door.
My heart was pounding now.
Nora stirred in the bassinet and made a soft sound.
I immediately reached down and touched her cheek.
She settled.
Grandpa watched me.
For a moment, something broke across his expression.
“You look exactly like your mother when you do that.”
I swallowed.
“Don’t change the subject.”
“I’m not.”
He walked slowly toward the fireplace.
Above it was the framed photograph that had been there for as long as I could remember.
My mother and father standing together on their wedding day.
Mom laughing.
Dad looking at her instead of the camera.
I had spent half my childhood staring at that picture.
Trying to remember their voices.
Trying to remember the way Mom smelled when she hugged me.
Trying to remember Dad lifting me onto his shoulders.
They had died when I was seven.
A car crash on a rainy highway.
That was the story I had known for twenty years.
Grandpa removed the photograph from the wall.
Behind it was nothing but faded wallpaper.
Then he reached beneath the mantel and pressed something.
A small wooden panel clicked open.
I stared.
“What is that?”
Grandpa reached inside.
When his hand came out, he was holding a key.
Not a house key.
A small silver key attached to a faded red string.
“I’ve kept this for twenty years,” he said.
My mouth went dry.
“What does it open?”
“Something your mother left behind.”
I stared at him.
“You told me everything from the accident was either destroyed or given to me.”
“I lied.”
The word landed harder than I expected.
“You lied?”
“I thought I was protecting you.”
“From what?”
Grandpa looked at Nora.
“From whoever her father really is.”
I felt anger rise through the fear.
“His name is Caleb Mercer.”
Grandpa’s head snapped toward me.
“What did you say?”
“Caleb Mercer.”
He gripped the key so tightly his knuckles turned white.
“Mercer?”
“Yes.”
“Are you certain?”
I almost laughed from disbelief.
“I dated him for eleven months, Grandpa. I think I know his last name.”
Grandpa walked backward until his legs touched the couch.
Then he sat.
“Eleven months.”
“Yes.”
“And he never met me?”
“No.”
“Never came here?”
“No.”
“Did he know my name?”
“I talked about you constantly.”
Grandpa shut his eyes.
That frightened me more than anything else.
“What did I do?” I whispered.
His eyes opened.
“You didn’t do anything.”
“You looked at my daughter and said I had no idea what I’d done.”
“I was shocked.”
“Because of her eyes?”
Grandpa said nothing.
I stepped closer.
“Because of her eyes?”
“Yes.”
I glanced down at Nora.
Her bright blue eye was half open.
The dark one remained closed.
“It’s called heterochromia,” I said. “The pediatrician explained it. It happens.”
“I know what it’s called.”
“Then why are you acting like it means something?”
“Because I’ve seen those eyes before.”
My breathing stopped.
“On Caleb?”
“No.”
Grandpa looked directly at me.
“On your mother.”
For a second, I thought I had misheard him.
“My mother had green eyes.”
“The mother you remember did.”
“What does that mean?”
Grandpa looked down at the silver key.
“Come with me.”
He led me through the kitchen and down the narrow hallway.
Past the bathroom.
Past my childhood bedroom.
All the way to the door at the end.
The basement.
I hated that basement when I was little.
Grandpa used to tease me about the furnace noises, telling me an old dragon lived beneath the house.
He opened the door and switched on the light.
“Stay here with Nora.”
He descended.
I listened to his footsteps moving below me.
Something scraped.
Then came the sound of metal against concrete.
“Grandpa?”
“One minute.”
I heard a lock click.
A moment later, he returned carrying a small black box.
It looked ancient.
The corners were scratched and the handle was wrapped in cracked leather.
He placed it on the kitchen table.
The silver key fit perfectly.
My pulse began hammering.
Grandpa hesitated before turning it.
“Your mother gave me this box three days before she died.”
My fingers went cold.
“Three days?”
“Yes.”
“She knew she was going to die?”
“I didn’t know that then.”
He opened the box.
Inside were envelopes.
Photographs.
A small cassette tape.
A newspaper clipping.
And a sealed folder with my name written across the front.
EMILY.
My mother’s handwriting.
I recognized it instantly from birthday cards I had kept all these years.
My knees weakened.
“She wrote that?”
Grandpa nodded.
“When?”
“Shortly before the crash.”
I reached for the folder.
Grandpa stopped me.
“Before you open it, there is something I need to tell you.”
“No more warnings.”
“You need this one.”
“Twenty years, Grandpa.”
My voice cracked.
“You kept something from me for twenty years.”
“I kept you alive for twenty years.”
Silence filled the kitchen.
Even Nora seemed quiet.
I stared at him.
“What did you just say?”
Grandpa lowered his voice.
“The crash that killed your parents wasn’t an accident.”
The room tilted.
I grabbed the edge of the table.
“No.”
“The police said—”
“I know what the police said.”
“You told me a truck lost control.”
“I told you what your mother asked me to tell you.”
I stepped away from him.
“Stop.”
“Emily—”
“Stop.”
Memories flashed through my mind.
Rain.
Black umbrellas.
A tiny white dress.
Grandpa holding my hand at the cemetery.
Two coffins.
People telling me my parents were in heaven.
I had spent twenty years believing a wet highway had taken them from me.
“You’re saying someone killed them?”
Grandpa’s voice was barely audible.
“I believe so.”
“Who?”
“That is the part your mother never told me.”
I looked at the folder again.
“Maybe she told me.”
Grandpa nodded.
“Maybe.”
I tore open the envelope.
Inside was a letter.
The paper had yellowed slightly at the edges.
My hands trembled as I unfolded it.
My mother’s handwriting covered three pages.
The first line nearly destroyed me.
My dearest Emily, if Dad gives you this letter, then something has happened that I was unable to stop.
I pressed my fist against my mouth.
Grandpa reached toward me.
I pulled away.
I needed to read.
I needed twenty years of lies to become something I could understand.
I continued.
There are things about our family that we kept from you because you were too young to carry them.
If you are reading this as an adult, I am sorry that the burden has now become yours.
I looked up.
“What family secret?”
“Keep reading.”
My eyes returned to the page.
Your father loves you more than anything in this world.
Whatever anyone tells you someday, never doubt that.
But there is something you need to know about where you came from.
I stopped.
My heart began pounding so loudly I could hear it.
“Where I came from?”
Grandpa stared at the floor.
I kept reading.
There was another photograph beneath the letter.
I pulled it out.
Three people stood in front of a lake.
My mother was one of them.
She looked young.
Maybe nineteen.
Grandpa stood beside her.
And between them was a man I had never seen.
Tall.
Dark hair.
A cleft in his chin.
My hands began shaking.
Because even though the photograph had been taken decades earlier, the resemblance was unmistakable.
He looked like Caleb.
Not vaguely.
Not in the way strangers sometimes shared features.
He looked enough like Caleb that they could have been brothers.
I turned the photograph over.
Three names were written on the back.
Margaret.
Thomas.
Daniel Mercer.
My breath caught.
“Mercer.”
Grandpa nodded.
“Who is Daniel Mercer?”
He didn’t answer.
“WHO IS DANIEL MERCER?”
Grandpa looked at me.
“He was your mother’s brother.”
I stared at him.
“My uncle?”
“Yes.”
“I never had an uncle.”
“You did.”
“Why have I never heard his name?”
“Because your mother wanted every trace of him removed from your life.”
I looked at the photograph again.
Daniel’s smile.
His dark hair.
That cleft.
Those eyes.
One blue.
One nearly black.
The photograph slipped from my fingers.
“Oh my God.”
Grandpa caught it before it hit the floor.
I backed away.
“No.”
“Emily—”
“Caleb has the same eyes.”
“I know.”
“The same chin.”
“I know.”
“The same last name.”
“I know.”
Nausea rolled through me.
“No.”
Grandpa moved toward me.
I raised both hands.
“Don’t.”
My thoughts were moving too fast.
Caleb.
The man I had loved.
The father of my daughter.
Mercer.
My mother’s brother had been named Mercer.
I felt sick.
“Are you saying Caleb is related to me?”
“I don’t know.”
“You just told me Daniel Mercer was my mother’s brother!”
“I said I don’t know who Caleb is.”
“Then find out!”
Nora began crying.
The sound cut through the room.
I immediately went to her.
My hands shook as I lifted her against my chest.
“Shh.”
Her tiny fingers curled around my shirt.
I looked at her beautiful face.
The eyes.
The chin.
Caleb’s curls.
My mind went somewhere horrible.
Grandpa seemed to understand.
“Emily, listen to me.”
I couldn’t.
“Listen to me.”
I finally looked up.
“Daniel Mercer was not your mother’s biological brother.”
I froze.
“What?”
“He was adopted.”
The terror in my chest loosened slightly.
Only slightly.
“You could have started with that.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Then Caleb could still be related to him.”
“Yes.”
“But not necessarily to me.”
“Correct.”
I held Nora tighter.
“Then why did Mom erase Daniel from our lives?”
Grandpa walked back to the box.
He removed another envelope.
This one was addressed to him.
“I think because of what Daniel became involved in.”
“What did he become involved in?”
Grandpa hesitated.
“Your mother called it the Mercer Project.”
I stared at him.
“That sounds ridiculous.”
“I thought so too.”
“What was it?”
“She never explained completely.”
“Grandpa.”
“She said Daniel discovered something about his biological family.”
“What?”
“She wouldn’t tell me.”
“Why?”
“Because she believed knowing too much was what got your father killed.”
I couldn’t breathe for a moment.
“My father?”
Grandpa nodded.
“Your mother believed your father was the original target.”
I sat at the kitchen table with Nora in my arms.
Nothing about my childhood felt solid anymore.
Nothing.
“Why would someone want Dad dead?”
“He had been helping Daniel.”
“With what?”
“I don’t know.”
“You keep saying that.”
“Because your mother was terrified, Emily. She deliberately told me as little as possible.”
I looked at the contents of the box.
“What about all this?”
“She told me not to open most of it.”
“And you listened for twenty years?”
“I made a promise.”
“They were dead.”
“You were alive.”
His answer silenced me.
Grandpa picked up the newspaper clipping.
He slid it across the table.
The headline read:
LOCAL RESEARCHER MISSING AFTER LABORATORY FIRE.
Beneath it was Daniel’s photograph.
The date was twenty-one years ago.
One year before my parents died.
“Daniel disappeared?”
“Yes.”
“Was his body found?”
“No.”
“Then he could still be alive.”
Grandpa’s expression changed.
“That’s what your mother feared.”
A chill moved through me.
“Why would she fear her own brother being alive?”
“Because the Daniel she grew up with wasn’t the same man who disappeared.”
“What happened to him?”
“He became obsessed.”
“With the Mercer Project?”
“Yes.”
Grandpa opened another photograph.
This one showed Daniel standing beside another man.
The second man’s face was partly turned away.
But there was something familiar about his posture.
Something about the shoulders.
I took the photograph.
On the back was a date.
Twenty-eight years ago.
And two words.
DANIEL + C.M.
My fingers went numb.
C.M.
Caleb Mercer.
No.
Caleb would have been a child then.
Maybe not even born.
“Who is C.M.?”
“I don’t know.”
But Grandpa’s expression told me he had a suspicion.
“You’re lying again.”
He looked wounded.
“I’m trying not to.”
“Then tell me.”
“I think C.M. may have been Daniel’s biological father.”
I stared at the initials.
“And you think Caleb is connected to him.”
“Yes.”
“How?”
“I don’t know yet.”
I looked at my daughter.
Nora had fallen asleep again.
So innocent.
So unaware that her face had just opened a grave my family had spent twenty years trying to keep closed.
Then something occurred to me.
“Why did Caleb disappear?”
Grandpa’s eyes met mine.
“What exactly happened the night you told him you were pregnant?”
I swallowed.
“We had dinner.”
“Where?”
“At his apartment.”
“What did he say?”
“At first, nothing.”
I remembered it vividly.
The pregnancy test in my purse.
Caleb sitting across from me.
The way his fork had stopped halfway to his mouth.
“I told him I was eight weeks pregnant.”
“And?”
“He asked if I was sure.”
“Then?”
“I showed him the test.”
Grandpa leaned forward.
“What happened next?”
“He went pale.”
“How pale?”
I looked at him.
“Like you did when you saw Nora.”
Grandpa slowly sat back.
My stomach tightened.
“I thought he was panicking about becoming a father.”
“What did he say?”
I searched my memory.
There had been something.
One sentence.
Something I had dismissed because I had been crying.
“He asked me a strange question.”
“What question?”
I closed my eyes.
Caleb’s face returned to me.
His hands trembling.
His voice almost a whisper.
Who else knows?
My eyes opened.
“He asked who else knew I was pregnant.”
Grandpa went completely still.
“What did you tell him?”
“I said you knew.”
His face changed.
“What else?”
“I told him your name.”
Grandpa stood so abruptly his chair scraped across the floor.
“What name?”
“Your name!”
“Exactly what did you say?”
“I said, ‘My grandfather Thomas Bennett knows.’”
Grandpa looked toward the curtained window.
“Oh God.”
“What?”
“He knew my name.”
“So?”
“Emily, Caleb didn’t disappear because you were pregnant.”
“How could you possibly know that?”
Grandpa pointed toward the box.
“Because your mother warned me this might happen.”
I stared at him.
“Twenty years before I met Caleb?”
He pulled out the cassette tape.
On its white label, my mother had written:
FOR DAD — IF THEY EVER FIND EMILY.
My blood ran cold.
Grandpa stared at those words.
“I thought we were safe,” he whispered.
“Safe from whom?”
Before he could answer, headlights swept across the thin gap beneath the curtains.
A vehicle had pulled into the driveway.
Grandpa killed the kitchen light.
“Don’t move.”
“What are you doing?”
“Take Nora.”
“I already have her.”
“Go downstairs.”
“Grandpa—”
“Now.”
Someone knocked on the front door.
Three slow knocks.
Grandpa went pale.
Nobody spoke.
Then came another three.
Nora stirred against my chest.
I could hear my own heartbeat.
Grandpa reached into a drawer beside the refrigerator and removed an old revolver.
I stared at him.
“I didn’t even know you owned that.”
“There are many things you don’t know.”
The person outside knocked again.
Then a man’s voice came through the door.
“Thomas?”
Grandpa stopped breathing.
The voice was calm.
Older.
Almost friendly.
“Thomas Bennett?”
Grandpa whispered something.
I barely heard it.
“What?”
He turned toward me.
“I know that voice.”
The man outside continued.
“I don’t want trouble.”
Grandpa tightened his grip on the revolver.
“Go away!”
Silence.
Then the stranger said something that made every hair on my body rise.
“I only came because the girl had her baby.”
My arms tightened around Nora.
Grandpa looked at me in horror.
Nobody outside should have known I was here.
Nobody should even have known I had left the hospital.
“Grandpa,” I whispered.
He motioned toward the basement.
But before I could move, my phone vibrated.
The sound seemed deafening.
A message had arrived from an unknown number.
I looked down.
There was no text.
Only a photograph.
My breath stopped.
It was a picture of me leaving the hospital that afternoon.
Nora was in my arms.
The photograph had been taken from across the parking lot.
A second message appeared.
DON’T LET THOMAS LIE TO YOU AGAIN.
Then a third.
ASK HIM WHO CALEB REALLY IS.
I slowly raised my eyes.
“Grandpa.”
“What?”
I showed him the phone.
His face collapsed.
Outside, the man knocked once more.
This time he said my name.
“Emily.”
I couldn’t move.
Grandpa stepped between me and the door.
“Don’t answer him.”
“Who is he?”
“I don’t know.”
“He knows me.”
“I know.”
“He knows about Nora.”
“I know.”
“Then who is he?”
Grandpa didn’t answer.
The stranger did.
“Emily, Caleb didn’t abandon you.”
My heart stopped.
I looked toward the door.
Grandpa shouted, “SHUT UP!”
The man outside continued.
“He left because Thomas Bennett told him exactly what would happen if he stayed.”
I turned slowly toward Grandpa.
His face told me everything before his mouth could.
“You talked to Caleb?”
Grandpa said nothing.
“You told me you never met him.”
“Emily—”
“You said you didn’t know him!”
“I was trying to protect you.”
The phrase I had heard all my life suddenly sounded poisonous.
“Did you make Caleb leave?”
“No.”
“Then what did you do?”
The stranger answered through the door.
“Ask Thomas what happened at St. Matthew’s Hospital twenty-seven years ago.”
Grandpa staggered backward.
The revolver nearly slipped from his hand.
I had never seen fear like that.
Not even when he first saw Nora.
“What happened there?” I asked.
“Nothing.”
The stranger laughed softly outside.
“You’re still lying, Thomas.”
“Leave my family alone!”
“Your family?”
The stranger’s voice changed.
There was anger beneath it now.
“You still call her your family after what you did?”
I felt dizzy.
“Grandpa?”
He wouldn’t look at me.
I stepped closer.
“What happened at St. Matthew’s?”
His eyes filled with tears.
“I wanted to tell you.”
“Tell me what?”
“I tried so many times.”
“WHAT?”
He looked at Nora.
Then at me.
And whispered:
“You weren’t born with the name Emily Bennett.”
Everything inside me went silent.
“What?”
The stranger outside spoke again.
“Open the folder, Emily.”
I looked toward the black box.
Beneath my mother’s letter was another sealed document I had not noticed.
Grandpa lunged toward it.
I moved faster.
I grabbed it.
“Emily, don’t.”
I tore it open.
Inside was a birth certificate.
My eyes went immediately to the mother’s name.
Margaret Bennett.
My mother.
Then the father’s name.
The name printed there wasn’t the man I had known as Dad.
It was someone else.
Someone whose surname made my knees buckle.
MERCER.
I stared at the paper.
“No.”
Grandpa began crying.
“No, no, no.”
My voice sounded like someone else’s.
Nora woke and began to fuss.
I looked from my daughter to the birth certificate.
Then back to Grandpa.
“If my father was a Mercer…”
I couldn’t finish.
Because another realization had arrived.
A horrifying one.
Caleb Mercer.
The man I loved.
The father of my child.
Grandpa seemed to understand exactly what I was thinking.
“Emily, the certificate doesn’t tell the whole story.”
“Then tell me the whole story!”
Outside, the stranger said calmly:
“I can.”
Grandpa raised the revolver toward the door.
“You stay away from her!”
Then came a sound from the porch.
A small metallic object sliding beneath the front door.
It stopped near my feet.
A key.
Attached to it was a faded red string.
Exactly like Grandpa’s.
I stared at it.
Grandpa stared too.
The stranger spoke one final time.
“Thomas has one key.”
“I have the other.”
“And Caleb has been waiting twenty-seven years for you to learn why.”
My breath caught.
“Caleb is alive?”
Silence.
Then footsteps moved away from the porch.
I rushed toward the window.
Grandpa grabbed my arm.
“Don’t.”
I pulled the curtain aside anyway.
A black car was reversing down the driveway.
For one second, its headlights swept across the porch.
Then it disappeared.
My phone vibrated again.
Another message.
This one contained an address.
And beneath it:
MIDNIGHT.
COME ALONE IF YOU WANT TO SEE CALEB.
I looked at the clock.
10:47 P.M.
Then another message appeared.
BRING YOUR MOTHER’S LETTER.
DO NOT BRING THOMAS.
I turned toward Grandpa.
His face had become strangely calm.
Too calm.
“What?” I asked.
He looked at the address on my screen.
Then he whispered:
“I know that place.”
My stomach tightened.
“What is it?”
Grandpa looked at Nora.
Then at the birth certificate in my hand.
And when he finally answered, I understood that the secret surrounding my daughter was much bigger than Caleb.
Much bigger than my parents.
Maybe even bigger than Grandpa himself.
“That address,” he said, “is where you were actually born.”
