Chapter 4 - Emily Had Met Daniel Secretly
Emily did not deny it.
She asked Jack to hear the entire story before deciding what it meant.
Three months earlier, while Jack was away for training, Daniel appeared
at their home.
He introduced himself as an old friend of the Carter family.
He asked Emily to deliver a sealed letter to Jack only after Jack
returned permanently from his overseas assignment.
Emily refused to hide something that serious without knowing more.
Daniel then told her the truth.
He was Jack’s biological father.
Emily was furious.
Not at Jack.
At Daniel.
“You waited thirty-three years and came to me?”
Daniel said he had tried contacting Margaret repeatedly.
She threatened to deny everything and told him Jack wanted no contact.
Daniel believed her for years.
Then he learned Jack had never been told.
Emily demanded he speak to Jack directly.
Daniel said he would.
He died of a sudden heart attack two weeks later.
“Why didn’t you tell me then?” Jack asked.
Emily’s eyes filled.
“You were preparing for deployment. Your commanding officer had just
told you your unit might move early. I kept telling myself I’d tell you
when you came home.”
Jack looked hurt.
“That wasn’t your decision.”
“I know.”
Emily did not defend herself.
“I was wrong.”
She had made the same mistake Margaret claimed to make.
Using protection to justify silence.
The difference was that Emily admitted it without turning the blame
elsewhere.
Then she revealed something else.
Daniel had left the sealed letter with her.
She placed it in Jack’s desk.
When she checked after Daniel died, it was gone.
Jack looked toward Margaret.
Margaret denied taking it.
Ryan suddenly spoke.
“I saw Uncle Robert in Jack’s office.”
Everyone turned.
“When?”
“After Dad’s memorial dinner.”
Thomas Carter had died two years earlier.
Robert was Thomas’s younger brother.
Ryan remembered Robert searching Jack’s desk while the family gathered
downstairs.
Jack asked why Ryan said nothing.
Ryan shrugged miserably.
“I thought he was looking for paperwork.”
The missing letter predated Daniel’s death.
Robert had known about Daniel before almost everyone else.
May you like
And now he had been recorded saying a locked box could make the family
“lose everything.”
