“After I gave birth, I brought my baby to meet the grandpa who raised me — but the moment he saw her face, he burst into tears and said, “This is impossible. You have no idea what you’ve done.” My grandpa was the only father I ever had after my parents died in a car crash. So when I got pregnant at 27 and the man I loved disappeared the same night I told him, Grandpa was the one who held me together. He had never met Caleb. I had kept putting off introducing them, telling …

“I need to see for myself. Not through you. Not through what William did to Mom. I need to know what Caleb actually did to me.”

Grandpa closed his eyes.

I took Nora back and headed toward my car, already knowing where I would begin.

—

That night, after Nora fell asleep, I pulled my mother’s cedar box from the closet.
If Grandpa had hidden an entire family from me, I needed to know what else had been hidden.

I was searching for proof that Grandpa had been wrong about Caleb.

Instead, I found proof Caleb had been hiding things from me, too.

Beneath several old scarves was a photograph.

I was four years old, sitting on a red bicycle.

Beside me stood a dark-haired little boy.

One blue eye.

One nearly black.

Caleb.

Underneath the photograph was a bundle of letters.

The earliest had been written in a child’s careful handwriting.