Certified documents.
Adoption records.
Legal help.
A test.
And most of all, the way he kept looking toward the house before answering my questions.
Then my phone rang.
“Is this Grant Mercer?”
“Yes.”
“I’m calling from the hospital. Raymond Mercer listed you as his emergency contact.”
I stood so quickly my chair rolled backward.
“What happened?”
“He collapsed this morning. Doctors discovered an aortic aneurysm and took him directly into emergency surgery.”
My mind went blank.
Dad had been standing in my backyard three days earlier.
Now surgeons were trying to save his life.
“Is he alive?”
“He was stable when he entered surgery.”
I held onto that word.
Stable.
Then she said something I wasn’t expecting.
“Before your father was sedated, he asked us to give you a sealed envelope.”
I froze.
“There is also an attorney here waiting to speak with you.”
“An attorney?”
“Yes. Priya Desai.”
