Chapter 12 - The Box
The safe-deposit box was at a private bank on LaSalle Street.
It required two keys.
Daniel had one.
Rebecca had the other.
That fact created a fresh argument before breakfast.
“Why did you have the key?” I asked Daniel.
“Your grandmother mailed it to me before our wedding.”
“And you never told me?”
“I thought it was a spare house key until the bank called.”
“That was two years later.”
“I know how it sounds.”
“It sounds like my husband has built a second marriage out of things he forgot to mention.”
He had no answer.
At the bank, the manager escorted us into a private room.
The box contained no money.
It held three items.
A microcassette recorder.
A sealed DNA test.
And a handwritten letter addressed to Charles.
Daniel picked up the DNA envelope. “What is this?”
Rebecca read the label.
PATERNITY ANALYSIS - DANIEL WHITMORE.
Daniel’s face changed.
“No.”
I looked at him. “Did your grandmother ever say anything?”
“About what? That Dad might not be my father?”
Laura became very still.
Too still.
I noticed.
“So you know.”
Daniel looked at her.
Laura closed her eyes.
“Your mother, Evelyn, was my closest friend.”
Daniel’s mother died when he was nineteen.
He rarely spoke about her.
Laura continued. “During the worst years of Charles and Thomas’s fighting, Evelyn left Charles for several months.”
Daniel stood so suddenly his chair hit the wall.
“No.”
“Daniel—”
“No.”
He walked to the far end of the room.
I wanted to comfort him, but I did not know if he would let me.
Rebecca opened the DNA envelope.
The report was old.
Probability of paternity: 0.00%.
Charles Whitmore was not Daniel’s biological father.
Daniel stared at the page.
Then he laughed, once, without humor.
“So what am I?”
Laura’s eyes filled.
“A man whose mother loved him.”
“That is not what I asked.”
The microcassette recorder still worked.
On it, Evelyn’s voice trembled through static.
“If anything happens to me, Daniel must know the truth. Charles raised him. Thomas fathered him.”
The room went dead silent.
Daniel turned white.
Thomas Whitmore.
Grant’s father.
May you like
Which meant Grant was not Daniel’s cousin.
He was Daniel’s half brother.
