I had always assumed it was affection.
Now I wasn’t so sure.
I opened another envelope.
Inside was a bank statement.
Then another.
Then another.
Paul said quietly:
“She wanted you to see the complete picture.”
I looked at the numbers.
The accounts I’d assumed contained millions were almost empty.
“What happened to her money?”
Paul smiled faintly.
“Keep reading.”
I pulled out another letter.
Daniel,
You spent three years waiting for me to die.
But I spent those same three years preparing for the day you would finally learn the truth.
My heart began pounding.
Then I reached the final page.
Only one sentence was written there:
“The house was never mine to leave you.”
I stared at it.
“What does that mean?”
Paul stood up.
“It means, Daniel, that everything you thought you were marrying into belonged to someone else.”
“Who?”
Paul opened the sealed legal document.
Then he looked directly at me.
“Your father.”
I froze.
My father?
The man who had suffered a stroke?
The man whose medical bills had driven me into desperation?
The man I believed had nothing left?
Paul pushed the document toward me.
“Florence knew your father many years before you ever met her.”
My hands shook as I picked it up.
And when I saw my father’s signature at the bottom of the page, I realized something terrifying.
My marriage to Florence had started long before the day I met her in that grocery-store parking lot.
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