Page 105 of To the Grave

I wondered if he missed my mom.

I knocked on the door and waited, but it only took a few seconds for him to open the door. He stood there in faded jeans and a T-shirt, his shaggy blond hair a little messy.

His blue eyes studied me for a long moment before he stood back to open the door wider. “I wondered when you’d come.”

I stepped into the house and looked around. It was like the outside: compact but neat. The walls were paneled with warm wood and a fire crackled in a fireplace against one wall. A plaid sofa faced a TV, and a stack of books and a coffee mug sat on a worn coffee table. Beyond the living room, I saw the white tile of a sun-drenched kitchen.

“Can I get you something?” he asked. “Coffee? Water? Beer?”

I shook my head. “I’m good.”

“Have a seat,” he said.

I sat on an overstuffed chair near the fireplace and waited while he settled back on the couch.

“You aren’t surprised to see me,” I said, because that much was obvious.

He shook his head. “Only a matter of time.”

“You could’ve told me,” I said. “After she died, or… at least once I got older.”

“Wasn’t my story to tell.” He took a drink from the mug and cradled it in his hands. “Not that part anyway.”

“You loved her,” I said. It wasn’t really a question in my mind. I just needed to hear him say it before I asked my other question, the big one.

His nod was slow, but when he spoke, his voice was fierce. “Like I’ve never loved anyone or anything.”

The words, the way he said them, caused tears to spring to my eyes. My mom had deserved this kind of love, the kind oflove that was stronger than time, stronger than death. She’d had it and she’d turned away from it, something I would never understand.

I was sorry for Mac, living out here in the woods all alone, the ghosts of his past — the ghost of his one great love — all around.

I reached into the pocket of my coat and withdrew the letter I’d found in my baby book, then handed it to him.

He looked down at it, touched the singed edges. I felt the weight of the past when he opened, then when he closed it a minute later.

“I think she’d want you to have it,” I said.

He nodded, his gaze clouded, like he was someplace else. Someplace far away.

“Are you…” I stumbled over the words. “Are you my biological father, Mac?”

I didn’t use the worddad. I probably never would, not with Mac, even if it turned out to be true.

Cassie had been right: I had a dad.

He wasn’t perfect. We would never agree on everything and we had a long way to go to heal our relationship, but he’d been there. Maybe not in all the ways I wanted and maybe not for everything, but he’d been there when it counted, through all the monotony of my childhood, and he’d come running when Ruth and I needed him.

“I don’t actually know,” he said.

I drew in a breath. I’d imagined a lot of scenarios, but this wasn’t one of them. “Did she know?”

“She said she wasn’t sure,” Mac said. “I didn’t care either way. I would have raised you. Loved you, loved her.”

“But she stayed with my dad.”

“She stayed with your dad,” Mac repeated. “I don’t think she knew how to be anyone but Eleanor Mercer Hammond.”

My mind spun with new questions. Had my mom known who my biological father was and chosen not to tell Mac? Had she told my dad there were doubts about my paternity?

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