PART 3
I stared at the photograph until the edges began to blur.
There was Harrison.
Younger by at least forty years.
His dark hair was thick, his face thinner, and his smile was so wide that for a moment, I barely recognized the man I had spent the last two years beside.
But it wasn’t Harrison that frightened me.
It was the woman standing next to him.
She looked to be in her early twenties.
She had long dark hair, a simple white dress, and one hand resting gently against Harrison’s chest.
I had never seen her before.
I turned the photograph over.
Six words were written on the back in Harrison’s handwriting.
“She is the reason I chose you.”
My fingers went cold.
I looked at his lawyer.
“Who is she?”
The lawyer didn’t answer immediately.
Instead, he opened his briefcase and removed a second envelope.
“This is going to be difficult,” he said.
“I’ve already heard that.”
He gave me a sad smile.
“I know.”
He placed the second envelope on the table.
“Before you open this one, you need to know something about Harrison.”
I stared at him.
“Was he married to her?”
“No.”
“Was she his mistress?”
“No.”
“Then who was she?”
The lawyer leaned back.
“Her name was Eleanor.”
The name meant nothing to me.
“She was Harrison’s younger sister.”
I blinked.
“His sister?”
“Yes.”
I looked at the photograph again.
The resemblance suddenly became obvious.
The same eyes.
The same smile.
The same slight crease beside the left eyebrow.
But that only created another question.
“Why have I never heard of her?”
The lawyer looked down.
“Because Harrison spent sixty years making sure nobody did.”
My heart began pounding.
“Why?”
He took a deep breath.
“Because Eleanor died when she was twenty-three.”
The room became strangely quiet.
I looked back at the photograph.
The beautiful young woman who had smiled so confidently beside her brother had been dead for almost sixty years.
“What happened?”
The lawyer folded his hands.
“That’s what Harrison wanted you to know.”
He pushed the second envelope toward me.
I opened it.
Inside was a handwritten letter.
It began:
My dearest Margaret,
I stopped.
My name was written at the top.
Not “Mrs. Harrison.”
Not “my wife.”
Just Margaret.
The name he had always called me beneath the oak tree.
I began reading.
If you’re reading this, I’m gone.
And I’m sorry.
Not because I married you. That was the best decision I made in my final years.
I’m sorry because I kept one enormous truth from you.
I didn’t choose you because you were poor.
I didn’t choose you because I needed protection from my children.
And I certainly didn’t choose you because I wanted a nurse, a caretaker, or someone to sit beside my deathbed.
I chose you because you reminded me of Eleanor.
I stopped reading.
My throat tightened.
At first, I felt offended.
Then confused.
Then something much worse.
Betrayed.
For two years, I had believed Harrison loved me for who I was.
Had our entire marriage been based on the memory of another woman?
I almost tore the letter.
But I continued.
Eleanor was my little sister.
When we were young, our parents had very little money. I was the oldest son, and I believed it was my responsibility to protect her.
She was stubborn, intelligent, and impossible to intimidate.
She also had one quality I never possessed.
She trusted people.
I smiled sadly.
That sounded like the Harrison I knew.
The man who always believed people could be better than they were.
Then I read the next paragraph.
When I was thirty-one, I built my first company. It grew faster than I expected. Suddenly, people who had ignored me wanted to know me. People who had never called began asking for loans, investments, favors, and introductions.
Money changed my life.
It also changed my family.
Harrison had become wealthy long before I ever met him.
But apparently, his greatest mistake happened when Eleanor was still alive.
She had fallen in love with a man named Daniel.
Daniel was poor.
Their father hated him.
Harrison, however, didn’t.
He helped the couple secretly.
He paid for Daniel to attend law school.
He even gave them money to start a new life.
But Eleanor discovered something Harrison didn’t know.
Daniel had been stealing from him.
Not a little.
A lot.
He had been secretly transferring company funds into accounts Harrison knew nothing about.
When Harrison discovered it, he confronted Daniel.
