Part 10
There was a phone number at the bottom.
Mason stared at it.
Seven years ago.
Nora had written to Charles Rowan.
Charles had never answered.
Or perhaps he had.
The letter alone did not tell them.
Celeste took it back from him.
Her face was wet now, though she had not made a sound.
“My father knew,” she said.
“We don’t know that,” Mason said.
“He received the letter.”
“We don’t know if he read it.”
Celeste laughed once, sharply.
“You think unopened mail means he didn’t read it?”
Mason had no answer.
She turned away from the desk.
“My father had assistants. Lawyers. People who opened everything. If this came here, he knew.”
“Celeste.”
“He knew.”
The certainty in her voice frightened him.
Not because it was unreasonable.
Because she had lived her whole life with a father who could be kind in the public ways that mattered and cold in the private ways that left no records. She knew the difference between an unopened envelope and a message that had been ignored.
Wren looked at Celeste.
“Did he hurt Mommy?”
Celeste’s face broke.
She crouched near the girl but kept her hands on her own knees.
“I don’t know,” she said.
The truth sounded raw in her mouth.
“But if he did, I’m sorry.”
Wren watched her.
“You didn’t do it.”
“No,” Celeste said. “But he was my dad. And sometimes that means you have to look at things you didn’t want to know about.”
Mason looked down at the letter.
The man who had warned Nora might have been his father. It might have been one of his father’s employees. It might have been someone connected to Charles Rowan, someone who knew enough about both families to turn fear into silence.
His father, Harold Harrow, had died four years earlier after a short illness. Mason had mourned him with complicated grief. Harold had been demanding, proud, and impossible to please, but he had also taught Mason how to negotiate, how to read a room, how to never let fear show before people who could use it.
Mason had spent years telling himself that his father was difficult, not cruel.
Now he wondered how many cruel things had arrived in the world wearing his father’s polished voice.
Celeste opened another drawer.
Inside were folders marked with dates.
She found one labeled H. HARROW / PRIVATE.
Mason saw the name.
So did she.
Neither of them moved.
Wren whispered, “What is it?”
Mason held her closer.
“I don’t know.”
Celeste reached for the folder.
Her fingers stopped above it.
Then she pulled it out.
It contained only three pages.
A photocopy of a legal agreement.
A note in Charles Rowan’s handwriting.
And a receipt from a private courier service dated six years and eleven months earlier.
Mason read the legal agreement first.
It was a confidentiality document.
Nora Bell’s name appeared near the bottom.
A payment amount was listed.
Celeste’s face went white.
Mason scanned the page.
The agreement said Nora had accepted a financial settlement in exchange for relinquishing all claims connected to a child born from her relationship with Mason Harrow.
His vision narrowed.
“I never saw this,” he said.
Celeste looked at him.
“I believe you.”
The words surprised them both.
Mason stared at the paper.
His signature was nowhere on it.
But Harold Harrow’s name appeared under the line for family representative.
And Charles Rowan’s name appeared as witness.
Wren shifted against Mason.
“Does that say my name?”
Mason folded the page before she could see it.
“No.”
“Why are you sad?”
He looked down at her.
Because his father had made a decision that belonged to him.
Because Nora had been pressured into signing something she may not have understood or may have signed because she had no choice.
Because Charles Rowan had watched.
Because Celeste’s wedding dress was brushing against the floor of the office while she held evidence that her dead father may have helped erase a child from Mason’s life.
Because every person he had trusted was suddenly part of a story he had never known existed.
“I’m sad because I missed you,” he said.
Wren looked at him carefully.
“You didn’t know me.”
“I know.”
“Then how did you miss me?”
Mason’s eyes burned.
He did not have a good answer.
Celeste did.
“You can miss something before you know its name,” she said quietly.
Mason looked at her.
She was still holding the folder. Her hands were shaking. Her face was pale, but she had not run from the room.
Wren seemed to consider the idea.
Then she placed her small hand against Mason’s cheek.
“You don’t have to cry,” she said.
He almost laughed.
May you like
Instead, he pressed his mouth against her fingers.
Outside the office, the estate grew louder. Doors opened and closed. Guests moved through the halls. The wedding planner was trying to keep people occupied. Somewhere below them, someone began playing the piano in the dining room, a soft uncertain piece meant to fill silence.
