His hands began shaking.
“Emily…”
His voice sounded wrong.
“Who is her father?”
I laughed nervously.
“You know who her father is.”
Grandpa stared at me.
“Caleb.”
The instant I said the name, something changed in him.
“And Caleb’s father?”
“What?”
“His father’s name.”
I frowned.
“William, I think.”
Grandpa slowly lowered himself back into his chair.
He pressed his lips against Nora’s forehead.
Then he whispered,
“No.”
“Grandpa, you’re frightening me.”
His eyes filled with tears.
“I promised your mother I would never tell you.”
My entire body stiffened.
“Tell me what?”
“Sarah made me swear.”
“Swear what?”
He looked away toward the trees.
“That you would grow up with that family nowhere near you.”
I sat down on the porch step because my knees suddenly felt weak.
“Grandpa…”
A terrible thought formed in my mind.
“Are Caleb and I related?”
His head snapped toward me.
“No.”
The force in his voice startled me.
“No, sweetheart. Absolutely not. Not by blood. Not in any way.”
Relief hit so hard I almost laughed.
“Then why are you acting like this?”
Grandpa looked down at Nora again.
“Your mother used to be Caleb’s nanny.”
I stared at him.
“What?”
“When Caleb was seven, Sarah worked for his family.”
Grandpa swallowed.
“She lived in their house for a while.”
Then he looked straight at me.
“And so did you.”
I couldn’t move.
“You were four or five.”
A strange image flickered through my mind.
“A garden.”
Grandpa froze.
“There was a really big garden.”
“Yes.”
Then another memory surfaced.
“A red bicycle.”
His eyes filled again.
“Yes.”
“And there was a boy.”
I pressed a hand against my chest.
“He used to run behind me while I learned how to ride it.”
Grandpa nodded slowly.
“That was Caleb.”
Everything inside me shifted.
The bookstore where Caleb and I met two years earlier.
The way he had looked at me.
The strange familiarity in his expression.
The questions he sometimes asked about my childhood.
None of it had been coincidence.
He had known who I was from the beginning.
I looked at Grandpa.
“What happened between Mom and William?”
Grandpa’s face hardened.
“After Caleb’s mother died, William became interested in your mother.”
He paused carefully.
“Sarah rejected him.”
“And?”
“He didn’t accept rejection well.”
Grandpa’s jaw tightened.
“He fired her. Then he used his money and connections to make sure other families nearby wouldn’t hire her either.”
A forgotten memory suddenly returned.
A man shouting.
My mother gripping my hand.
A doorway.
