“I need access to my safe deposit box,” I said.
Within minutes, I was seated in a small private room with beige walls and a polished table. The bank manager, a careful woman named Ms. Nair, set the long metal box before me.
My hands shook as I opened it.
Inside were my mother’s pearl earrings, my father’s watch, a small stack of savings bonds, and a sealed envelope with my name written in my father’s slanted handwriting.
Claire, only open this when you are ready to stop explaining him away.
The room blurred.
I had seen that envelope once before.
On the day after my father’s funeral, Derek found me holding it at our apartment table. He had read the outside, then gently told me grief made people suspicious. He said my father had never liked him because no man seemed good enough for me.
I wanted to believe that.
So I locked the envelope away and spent seven years not being ready.
Now I tore it open.
Inside was a handwritten letter, a flash drive, and three photographs.
The first photograph showed Derek standing outside a motel beside Marissa Cole.
The second showed Marissa heavily pregnant, one hand pressed protectively to her stomach.
The third showed my father sitting across from Derek in a diner, his expression grave, Derek’s face turned sharply toward the camera as if he had just realized he was being watched.
I unfolded the letter.
My dearest Claire,
I hope I am wrong. More than anything, I hope this letter becomes an embarrassment from an overprotective father. But if you are reading it, I suspect you have reached the point where love and fear have become difficult to tell apart.
Derek is not the man he says he is.
He has debts under names that are not his own. He has been using documents connected to his employer and possibly to my accounts. I confronted him today. He denied everything until I mentioned Marissa Cole. Then he stopped smiling.
I have copies of what I found on the drive. Take them to Everett & Lowe. Not the police first. Not Derek. And do not go alone.
I pressed my hand over my mouth.
Annie leaned closer. “Claire?”
I read the final lines.
There is one more thing, sweetheart. Marissa’s child may be Derek’s. If so, he has hidden more than an affair. He has hidden a life.
My father had signed it, Love always, Dad.
Under his signature was a postscript added in shakier handwriting.
If anything happens to me before the wedding, ask Martin Vale what he saw.
I looked up.
Martin.
The room tilted.
Annie took the letter from me, read the postscript, and went pale.
“My father?” she whispered.