Gwen explained that Andrew came home shaken the night I told him, still holding my pregnancy test. He hadn’t even made it through dinner before his mother, Matilda, forced the truth out of him.
And suddenly, I was back there.
Cold bleachers. My hands shaking.
“Heather, you’re scaring me,” he’d said.
“I’m pregnant.”
He went pale… then took my hands. “Okay. Okay, babe.”
“Okay?”
“We’ll figure it out,” he said, voice trembling—but he didn’t let go.
Back in the kitchen, Leo whispered, “So he knew.”
“Yes,” I said. “I told him.”
Then I read the part that made everything blur.
Matilda had exploded. Their father already had a transfer lined up, and she forced them to leave early. Andrew begged to see me—to explain.
She refused.
And then—
He wrote letters.
But his mother intercepted them.
I never received a single one.
I pushed my chair back so hard it scraped the floor.
“No.”
“Mom…”
“No. That’s not possible.”
“There’s more,” Leo said gently.
I looked at him.
“Some letters were hidden. Some thrown away. Some… kept. In a box.”
A box.
Proof.
“I spent eighteen years thinking he ran,” I whispered.
At that moment, my mom walked in holding dinner rolls.
“I brought the good ones—” She stopped. “Heather? What happened?”
I turned to her. “He wrote.”
“Who?”
“Andrew.”
My dad appeared behind her. “What’s going on?”
I handed her the phone. She read. Dad leaned over her shoulder.
Her face changed first.
“Ted… he wrote to her.”
My father swore under his breath.
“If I’d known he wanted to be involved,” he snapped, “I would’ve gone to that house myself.”
“Ted—”
“No, Lucy. That woman let our daughter believe she was abandoned.”
His voice cracked.
That was what broke me.
My father—almost crying in my kitchen—because someone had stolen eighteen years from us.
Leo wrapped his arms around me. “I’m sorry.”
I pulled back, holding his face. “Don’t apologize. I’m not mad at you.”
His eyes were wet.
“So… he didn’t leave?”
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