A later letter was written in an older, less careful hand.
‘Grandfather says he’s leaving something for me when I’m old enough. Dad says I’ll never touch any of it without him. Maybe someday I’ll finally be able to help you myself.’
He had known.
On the back of the last letter, in my mother’s slanted script, were five words:
‘He isn’t like his father.’
My mother had trusted Caleb before I was old enough to remember him.
Now I needed to know whether I’d been a fool to do the same.
My mouth went dry.
I remembered a night on Caleb’s couch, months before I knew I was pregnant, when he had asked me, almost too casually, if I ever had a red bicycle as a child.
“You look exactly like your mother.”
I had laughed and said yes; my mom bought it secondhand. He had smiled at the ceiling like a man who had just answered a question he had been carrying for twenty years.
