Ben looked at his mother.
Diane began trembling.
And then I learned the second secret.
Four years earlier, while Ben and I were desperately trying to conceive, Claire had contacted him.
She had written a letter asking to meet her father.
She didn’t want money.
She only wanted to know him.
Ben had shown Diane the letter.
And Diane had convinced him not to respond.
“We were afraid she’d ruin your marriage,” Diane whispered.
I couldn’t believe what I was hearing.
“For four years, I cried because I couldn’t give Ben a child. And all that time, he already had a daughter who was begging to know him?”
Neither answered.
“Did she contact you again?”
Ben hesitated.
Then he admitted something even worse.
“Yes. Last month.”
My heart began pounding.
“What did she say?”
He pulled out his phone and showed me an email.
Claire had written:
