CHAPTER 3: JACOB'S LAST SECRET
Amelia stared at the envelope.
Every breath felt painful.
“How do you have this?”
Evelyn's eyes filled with shame.
“Because I kept it from you.”
The room fell silent.
Amelia slowly sat down.
“What?”
Evelyn looked twenty years older than she had moments earlier.
“The morning after the accident, Jacob's lawyer contacted me.”
Amelia felt cold.
“He had paperwork stored in a safety deposit box. Instructions in case anything happened to him.”
Evelyn slid the envelope across the table.
“Your letter was inside.”
Amelia couldn't move.
“Why didn't you give it to me?”
The older woman began crying.
“Because I hated you.”
The words hung in the air.
“I blamed you for his death. I blamed you for everything.”
Amelia said nothing.
Deep down, she had always known.
“But that wasn't the only thing I hid.”
A darker fear entered Amelia's chest.
Evelyn continued.
“Three months before the accident, Jacob donated sperm to a fertility program.”
Amelia stared.
“What?”
“He told me he wanted to help families who couldn't have children.”
The room spun.
Evelyn nodded slowly.
“After he died, one of those donations resulted in a pregnancy.”
Amelia's pulse thundered in her ears.
“Lucas.”
“Yes.”
The world shifted beneath her feet.
Lucas wasn't Jacob's secret son.
Lucas wasn't evidence of betrayal.
Lucas was a child created after Jacob's death.
A child who had never known his father.
A child carrying half of Jacob's DNA.
Tears filled Amelia's eyes.
For six years she had believed Jacob vanished completely from the world.
But he hadn't.
Part of him survived.
Part of him was sleeping upstairs in a hospital bed.
And then Evelyn revealed the final truth.
“The woman who gave birth to Lucas was dying of cancer.”
Amelia listened in stunned silence.
“She contacted me before she passed away.”
Evelyn wiped her eyes.
“She told Lucas about Jacob. She showed him photographs.”
The older woman's voice broke.
“Do you know what Lucas used to say?”
Amelia couldn't answer.
Evelyn smiled through tears.
“He said someday he wanted to meet the doctor lady in the pictures.”
Amelia frowned.
“What pictures?”
Evelyn reached into her purse again.
This time she removed a photograph.
Amelia gasped.
It was an old engagement picture.
Her and Jacob.
Holding hands.
Laughing.
Dreaming about a future that never came.
“Lucas knew who I was?”
Evelyn nodded.
“He called you his angel.”
Outside the consultation room, thunder shook the hospital windows.
But Amelia barely heard it.
Because upstairs, recovering from surgery, slept a little boy whose existence connected her to the man she had never stopped loving.
And for the first time in six years, Amelia opened Jacob's letter.