PART4

“I’m their son.”

“That doesn’t answer my question.”

Wyatt swallowed.

“I think I might have information that matters.”

My father immediately stood.

“Wyatt, sit down.”

But for once, my brother didn’t obey.

He looked at me.

And I saw something I had never expected to see in his eyes.

Fear.

Not fear of losing money.

Fear of discovering that everything he had believed about his family was a lie.

Judge Wynn called a brief recess.

The attorneys gathered near the bench. My parents remained seated, whispering urgently to each other.

I walked toward the courthouse water fountain.

My hands were trembling.

I hadn’t realized how much energy it would take to say those things aloud.

For twenty-two years, I had imagined confronting my parents.

Sometimes I imagined screaming.

Sometimes I imagined asking why.

Sometimes I imagined walking away without saying anything.

But I had never imagined doing it in a courtroom while strangers watched me explain the worst afternoon of my childhood.

A few minutes later, someone approached.

It was Wyatt.

He stood several feet away.

“Matthew.”

I turned.

He looked uncomfortable.

“Don’t call me that like we’re close.”

He nodded.

“Okay.”

Silence.

Then he said something I wasn’t expecting.

“I didn’t know.”

I stared at him.

“What?”

“I didn’t know they abandoned you.”

I studied his face.

Wyatt was thirty years old. He had grown up in the same house where my parents had raised me for eight years. He had gone to private schools, attended birthday parties, taken family vacations, and received everything I had been denied.

He had never once wondered why he had no older brother.

Or perhaps he had.

“I was told you ran away,” he continued. “Dad said you had behavioral problems. Mom said you were sent to live somewhere else because you were dangerous.”

I felt something cold move through my chest.

“Dangerous?”

He looked down.

“That’s what they told me.”

I wanted to ask him why he had never searched for me.

Why he had never asked for a photograph.

Why he had never wondered what happened to the brother whose bedroom had apparently disappeared from the house.

But then I remembered something.

Wyatt had been six when I was abandoned.

He had been a little boy too.

He hadn’t made those decisions.

“Why are you here, Wyatt?”

He rubbed his palms against his trousers.

“Because yesterday, after we received the investigator’s report, I found something in Dad’s office.”

“What?”

“A box.”

He looked around to make sure our parents weren’t nearby.

“There were letters in it. Old letters. From Aunt Lorraine.”

My heart skipped.

“Do you still have them?”

“I brought copies.”

He reached inside his jacket and pulled out a small envelope.

I recognized the handwriting immediately.

It was Aunt Lorraine’s.

Wyatt handed it to me.

“I think you should read this.”

I opened the envelope.

The letter was dated September 1996.

Two years after I had disappeared.

It began:

Dear Arthur and Evelyn,

I am writing one last time because I cannot keep pretending that what happened to Matthew was acceptable.

I know you received the insurance payment. I know because Arthur told me himself that the money helped you settle your debts.

But I also know something you do not.

The little boy is alive.

My fingers tightened around the paper.

I read that sentence again.

The little boy is alive.

I continued.

I spoke to a woman who worked with the children at the station that night. She told me Matthew was placed with a temporary family before being taken in by a kind older man. His name is Elijah.

My breath caught.

Elijah.

My Elijah.

The letter continued.

I know where he is. I know he is safe. And I know you have not made one attempt to contact him.

If you ever decide to become parents again, I hope you remember that a child does not stop being your responsibility simply because you stop seeing him.

At the bottom was a final sentence.

I will not protect your secret forever.

I lowered the paper.

For twenty-two years, I had believed my parents never knew what happened to me after that night.

But they had known.

They had known I was alive.

They had known I was safe.

They had even known the name of the man who raised me.

And they had done nothing.

I looked at Wyatt.

“Where is Aunt Lorraine now?”

He swallowed.

“She died last year.”

My chest tightened.

“Did she leave anything else?”

He nodded.

“There’s something else.”

He handed me another envelope.

This one was addressed to me.

Not to Arthur.

Not to Evelyn.

To Matthew.

My hands began shaking.

I opened it carefully.

Inside was a photograph.

It showed me as a little boy sitting at a kitchen table, wearing a blue sweater and smiling with a missing front tooth.

I remembered that photograph.

I had seen it once in an old family album before everything happened.

On the back, Aunt Lorraine had written:

Matthew, if this ever reaches you, I hope you know someone in your family never stopped loving you. I am sorry I wasn’t brave enough to save you.

I couldn’t speak.

For the first time since Elijah’s funeral, I felt tears coming without trying to stop them.

Wyatt stood quietly.

“I know I can’t fix anything,” he said. “But I thought you deserved to know.”

I folded the letter.

“Thank you.”

He nodded.

Then he said something that made me look at him again.

“There’s another reason I came here.”

“What reason?”

He hesitated.

“Mom and Dad aren’t just after the inheritance.”

I waited.

“They’re in serious financial trouble.”

When the hearing resumed, I was no longer thinking only about the $3.8 million.

I was thinking about the insurance money.

The letters.

The years of silence.

And the possibility that my parents had a much larger motive than simply believing they deserved a share of Elijah’s estate.

Judge Wynn took her seat.

“Are we ready to proceed?”

My parents’ attorney stood.

“Yes, Your Honor.”

I stood too.

“Yes, Your Honor.”

The judge looked at me.

“Mr. Marsh, I understand there may be additional evidence.”

“Yes, Your Honor. I would like to introduce the correspondence between the plaintiffs and Mrs. Lorraine Bennett, the mother’s sister, which establishes that they knew I was alive after my disappearance.”

Their attorney objected immediately.

“Your Honor, we question the authenticity and relevance of these documents.”

I nodded.

CONTINUE FOR NEXT PART5…