“Mr. Mercer?”
“Yes.”
“Priya Desai.”
She introduced herself as Dad’s attorney.
“Your father first contacted me about six weeks ago.”
“Six weeks?”
“Actually, the situation started before that. My office was helping settle another estate, and your father’s name appeared during the search.”
She nodded toward the envelope.
“He wanted you to read his letter before I explained anything.”
My hands shook as I broke the seal.
Inside was a handwritten letter and several documents.
The first sentence made me stop breathing.
**Grant, I need you to understand one thing before anything else. I am your father. Nothing in these papers changes that.**
I kept reading.
Then my entire childhood rearranged itself.
Dad explained that I had been born to his younger sister, Eleanor.
The woman I had always believed was simply a distant relative.
She had been seventeen.
Dad was twenty-six and already married to the woman I grew up calling Mom.
