Chapter 2 - THE BLUE BOX
Adrian caught Vanessa before she reached the staircase.
“Where are you going?”
“Get your hands off me.”
“Not until you tell me what’s happening.”
“There is nothing happening!”
She tried to pull away.
Adrian tightened his grip on her wrist.
Not painfully.
Just enough to stop her.
“Then why are you running?”
Vanessa looked toward Noah.
The boy was still holding Clara’s hand.
That image seemed to enrage her more than anything else.
“You poisoned him against me.”
Clara shook her head.
“I never had to.”
Vanessa’s expression hardened.
“You ungrateful little—”
“Enough.”
Adrian’s voice thundered through the foyer.
Everyone stopped.
Two housekeepers stood frozen near the hallway.
The butler had appeared beside the dining room.
Even the security guard near the front entrance had turned around.
Adrian pointed upstairs.
“Noah.”
His son looked up.
“Show me the box.”
Vanessa stepped in front of him.
“No.”
Adrian stared at her.
“What did you say?”
“That room contains private belongings.”
“It’s our house.”
“It’s my dressing room.”
“And my son says you’re hiding something there.”
Vanessa laughed bitterly.
“So now we take orders from six-year-olds?”
“No.”
Adrian glanced at Clara.
“We follow evidence.”
They went upstairs.
Noah led them into Vanessa’s enormous dressing room.
He walked past shelves of designer handbags and rows of expensive shoes.
Then he stopped beside a built-in cabinet.
“There.”
Adrian opened it.
Nothing.
Noah shook his head.
“Behind.”
Adrian removed several boxes.
A small panel was hidden behind them.
He pulled it open.
Inside sat a faded blue box.
Vanessa stopped at the doorway.
“No.”
Adrian lifted it out.
The box was locked.
“Key.”
“I don’t have it.”
Noah reached beneath a velvet jewelry tray.
He pulled out a tiny silver key.
“I saw her hide it.”
Vanessa stared at him.
“You went through my things?”
Noah flinched.
Clara immediately moved beside him.
Adrian noticed the reaction.
Not just Noah’s fear.
Clara’s instinct.
She had moved before anyone else.
Like a mother.
Adrian unlocked the box.
Inside were hospital records.
Photographs.
A silver bracelet.
Several letters.
And a birth certificate.
Adrian picked it up.
His eyes moved across the page.
NOAH JAMES BLACKWOOD.
Father: Adrian Thomas Blackwood.
Mother:
Clara Elise Bennett.
His hand began shaking.
“No.”
Clara closed her eyes.
Vanessa stepped forward.
“That document is fake.”
Adrian pulled out another paper.
A hospital identification bracelet.
BABY BENNETT.
Then another.
CLARA BENNETT.
Matching admission numbers.
He looked at Clara.
“You were there.”
“Yes.”
“You gave birth to him.”
“Yes.”
“Then why didn’t I know your name?”
Clara looked at Vanessa.
“Because she made sure you never did.”
Adrian turned toward his wife.
Vanessa straightened her shoulders.
“You need to understand what was happening then.”
Adrian’s face changed.
Those words were enough.
Not a denial.
An explanation.
“What did you do?”
Vanessa shook her head.
“I protected this family.”
Clara laughed through her tears.
“You stole my child.”
Vanessa snapped.
“You were nobody!”
Noah jumped.
Adrian’s expression became ice.
Vanessa realized what she had said.
But it was too late.
Clara stepped toward her.
“I was his mother.”
“You were a twenty-four-year-old woman with no money and no family.”
“I had Noah.”
“You had nothing.”
Adrian slammed the box onto the counter.
“STOP.”
Silence.
He picked up one of the letters.
It was addressed to him.
ADRIAN BLACKWOOD.
The envelope had never been opened.
He looked at Clara.
“You wrote this?”
“Three days after Noah was born.”
Adrian opened it.
His eyes moved across the first lines.
Then stopped.
His face went white.
Clara remembered every word.
Adrian read one sentence aloud.
“If you believe nothing else, please believe this: I did not abandon our son.”
He lowered the letter.
There were eleven more underneath.
All unopened.
All addressed to him.
Adrian looked at Vanessa.
“You had these?”
Vanessa said nothing.
“For six years?”
Silence.
“ANSWER ME.”
“Yes.”
The word destroyed something inside the room.
Adrian stared at the woman he had married.
Then he found something beneath the letters.
A photograph.
Clara was lying in a hospital bed.
A newborn Noah rested against her chest.
She was kissing his forehead.
And written across the bottom in Clara’s handwriting were four words.
For Adrian.
Our beautiful little boy.
May you like
Adrian sat down.
For the first time in Noah’s life, his father understood that the story of his birth had been a lie.
