My dear Don,
I wanted you to know that I don’t regret our time together. Though what we shared was never meant to last, I will always remember you with affection. That said, you must see that you can never acknowledge our child. Walter has forgiven me and has promised to love this child as he has our sons. And so I ask that you stay away and let us rebuild our lives. It’s best for all of us.
Love,
Danielle
Shock faded into stunned, reluctant acceptance as Erica’s eyes misted over with tears. Not once in her journals had Danielle ever even hinted at the affair she had had with Don Jarrod. Yet these few, simple words were impossible to deny even as the page before her blurred and she blinked frantically to clear her vision. Slowly she traced the tip of one finger across the faded ink, as if she could actually touch her mother. Though a ball of ice had settled in the pit of her stomach, she realized that this letter explained so much.
Walter had never been an overly affectionate father, even with Erica’s older brothers. But with her, Walter had been even more…distant. Now at least, she knew why. She wasn’t his child. She was, instead, a constant reminder of his wife’s infidelity. Oh, God.
Christian was sitting there across from her and not speaking, and for that she was grateful. If he tried to say something kind or sweet or sympathetic, she’d lose what little control she was desperately clinging to.
She lifted her gaze to look at him and said in a last-ditch attempt to avoid the inevitable, “How do I know my mother actually wrote this letter? For all I know you’ve had it forged for your own reasons.”
“And what could those be?” Christian asked. “What possible reason could the Jarrod family have for lying about this?”
“I don’t know,” she admitted as she frantically tried to come up with something, anything that might explain all of this away. Her family wasn’t a close one, but they were all she had. If she accepted this as truth, wouldn’t that mean she would lose them all?
“Look at the other two papers,” he urged, taking a sip of his coffee.
She didn’t want to, but didn’t know how to avoid it. Pretending this day had never happened, that Christian Hanford had never appeared at her office, wouldn’t work. Hiding her head in the sand wouldn’t change anything. If this were actually true, then she had to know. And if it were all some elaborate lie, then she had to know that, too.
Nodding to herself, she looked at the next paper and froze in place. It was a letter from her father to Donald Jarrod and it managed, in a few short lines, to completely disintegrate the last of her doubts.
Jarrod,
My wife is dead, delivering your daughter. This letter is as close as you’ll ever get to the child, make no mistake. If you try to get around me, I’ll see to it that you regret it.
Walter Prentice
“Oh, my God.” Erica slumped against her chair and looked at Christian.
“I’m sorry this is so hard.” His voice was without inflection, but she thought she caught the sheen of sincerity in his dark brown eyes. Still, his being sorry didn’t change anything.
“I don’t even know what to say,” she whispered, staring at her father’s handwriting. She’d have known that scrawl anywhere. She knew it was genuine because as her older brothers had long said, what forger could ever reproduce such hideous writing?
God. Her brothers.
Half brothers.
Did they all know? Had they been lying to her, too, all these years? Was nothing in her life what she’d thought it was? If she wasn’t Erica Prentice, then just who was she?
“Ms. Prentice…Erica,” Christian said, “I know you’re having a hard time with this.”
“I don’t think you could have the slightest idea,” she told him.
“Fair enough,” he said. “But I do know that your biological father regretted never being able to know you.”
“Did he?” She shook her head, unsure just what she felt about Donald Jarrod. What kind of man was it who slept with another man’s wife? Who created a child and then never made an attempt to acknowledge it? Had Walter’s letter really kept Don Jarrod away? Was he that easily put off? Had his affair with Danielle and Erica’s birth meant nothing to him?
As if he knew exactly where her thoughts had taken her, Christian said, “Donald’s wife, Margaret, died of cancer, leaving him with five children to raise alone when the youngest, your sister Melissa, was only two.”
“My sister,” she repeated.
“Yes,” he said, “and Melissa is eager to meet you, by the way. She’s delighted she’s not the only girl in the family anymore.”
“I’m the only girl in my family, too—” Erica laughed shortly as she looked at him. “But then, apparently I’m not.”
An icy wind blasted down the street and the sun slipped behind a bank of gray clouds. Erica shivered, but didn’t know if it was the emotional reaction or the sudden drop in temperature that caused it.
Christian said, “Don met your mother at a vulnerable point in his life—”
“And that excuses him?”
“No, it doesn’t,” he said, his features tightening even as his voice grew clipped. “I’m simply trying to explain it to you the same way Don did for me. He knew how you’d feel hearing this news.”
“I’m surprised he gave it a thought,” she said. “Not one word from him my whole life and now I’m supposed to be grateful that my biological father is popping up after his death?”
“He didn’t contact you because he thought it would make your life more difficult.”
“Putting it lightly.”
“Exactly. Don’t think you weren’t on his mind, though.” Christian folded his hands around his coffee cup. “I knew him for a lot of years and I can tell you that to him, family was most important. It must have driven him insane knowing you were here and completely out of his reach.”
“So my father’s—Walter’s—threat worked. Donald stayed away from me to avoid scandal.”
“No.” Christian smiled a little at that. “Don wasn’t worried about what other people thought of him. My guess is he stayed away out of respect for you and your father. He wasn’t the kind of man to go out looking to destroy marriages.”
“And yet…”
Christian shook his head. “Just before he died, Don talked to me about all of this because he knew I’d be the one coming to see you.”
“So even when he knew he was dying, he didn’t get in touch with me.” Erica wasn’t sure how she felt about that. If Donald Jarrod had contacted her, would she have believed him? Would she have welcomed him? She couldn’t say. Her relationship with her father had never been a good one, but she did love Walter. He was her father. The only one she’d ever known.
Didn’t she at least owe him loyalty?
Frowning, the man across from her admitted, “I argued with him about that. I thought he should talk to you. Tell you this himself. But he refused to go back on his word. He’d sworn to Walter he would stay away and he did, though I believe it cost him a great deal to keep that promise.”
“I’ll have to take your word for that, won’t I?”
“I guess so.” Their waiter appeared with a coffeepot to refill Christian’s cup, but when he would have stayed to take their order, he was waved away again. “Look,” Christian continued when they were alone again. “Just do me a favor and read the last letter in that envelope before I say any more.”
She really didn’t want to. What more was there to tell? What in her life was left to shake up and rearrange? Yet, morbid curiosity had a grip on her now and Erica knew she’d have to satisfy it.
Somehow, she wasn’t surprised when she glanced at the bottom of the page and saw the name Donald Jarrod in a bold signature. Lifting her gaze to the top of the paper, she read,
My Dear Erica,
I know how you must be feeling right now and I can’t blame you. But please know that if I had been given the opportunity, I would have loved you as I cared for your mother.
People—even parents—aren’t perfect. We make mistakes. But if we get the chance we try to correct them. This is my chance. Come to Colorado. Meet your other family. And one day, I hope you’ll be able to think of me kindly.
Your father,
Donald Jarrod
Again her eyes misted over. She had never known her mother. She’d grown up with a stepmother, Angela, who had been as distant in her own way as Walter had. Now, it turned out, she’d never known her father, either.
“Did you read these letters?”
“No. Don gave them to me in the closed envelope and they’ve stayed sealed up until just now.”
She looked at him. “And I’m supposed to take your word for that, too?”
He met her gaze. “I’ll never lie to you, Erica. That is one thing you can depend on.”
Since she’d only just discovered that her entire life had been based on a lie, that should have been a comforting statement. On the other hand, she didn’t know if the statement itself was a lie.
A headache burst into life behind her eyes and Erica knew it was only going to get worse. So it was best if she just finished this meeting as quickly as possible. Then she could get away. Think. Plan. Try to make some sense out of this insensible situation.
Pushing her hair out of her eyes as the wind whipped it into a frenzy, she said, “All right. Say I believe you. I’m Donald Jarrod’s daughter. What now?”
He reached down for his briefcase, opened it and extracted the manila envelope he’d shown her earlier. “As a beneficiary of Don’s will, you receive an equal share of his estate.”
“What?”
He gave her a small smile. “The estate’s been split between all six of his children.”
Erica sighed and took a gulp of her iced tea. “I can imagine how news of me went over at the reading of the will.”
“As you might guess. Surprise. Shock.”
“Sounds like we’ll have a lot in common,” she said wryly, still reeling from the information overload she’d experienced.
“More than you might think,” he told her as he slid the envelope across the table toward her. “There’s a catch to your inheritance, though.”
“Of course there is,” she mused, laying her fingertips atop the will as if she needed the physical contact to assure herself that this was all for real.
“Each of you has to move to Aspen to help run the family business. If you don’t…”
“If we don’t, then no inheritance.”
“Basically.”
“Move to Aspen?” She glanced around her at the city she’d grown up in and loved. The city sidewalks were at the bottom of canyons built of steel and brick. Sly sunlight poking through gray clouds appeared and disappeared as if performing magic tricks. Crowds of pedestrians hustled along, everyone hurrying, fighting the wind and the snarls of traffic. Car horns blared, music from a street corner musician peeled out and somewhere close by, a tiny dog yapped impatiently.