“NEVER LET ETHAN FIND OUT WHO HIS REAL FATHER IS.”
His hands began to shake.
“Mom… what does this mean?”
Lucy was crying on the phone.
For several seconds, she couldn’t speak.
Then she finally whispered:
“The man who raised you wasn’t your biological father.”
Ethan felt his chest tighten.
“What?”
The elderly woman covered her mouth.
Lucy continued.
“When I was nineteen, I fell in love with a man my family hated. His name was Daniel Carter.”
Margaret suddenly went pale.
“Daniel?”
Ethan looked at her.
“You know him?”
She slowly sat down.
“Daniel was the son of the man who owned half the factories in this town.”
Lucy’s voice trembled through the phone.
“His family found out I was pregnant. They offered me money to disappear.”
“And you refused?”
“Yes.”
Lucy took a shaky breath.
“So they created another plan.”
After Ethan was born, Daniel’s father paid a hospital employee to falsify records.
Margaret was told her grandson had died.
Lucy was told her mother wanted nothing to do with her.
And Daniel suddenly vanished.
Ethan clenched his jaw.
“Where is Daniel now?”
Margaret slowly pointed toward the photograph.
“The man beside me…”
Ethan looked down again.
His heart stopped.
“That’s Daniel?”
Margaret nodded.
“I met him eight months ago. He came to my house asking questions about you.”
Ethan stood so quickly his chair crashed backward.
“He knew I was alive?”
“Yes.”
“Then why didn’t he find me?”
Margaret’s eyes filled with fear.
“Because someone was following him.”
Then the diner door opened.
Margaret’s face instantly lost all color.
A gray-haired man in an expensive black coat walked inside.
He stopped when he saw Ethan.
Neither man moved.
Then the stranger whispered:
“Ethan?”
Lucy screamed through the phone:
“DON’T TRUST HIM!”
But Ethan was already staring at the silver pendant hanging around the stranger’s neck.
The exact same rose.
The man’s eyes filled with tears.
“I’ve been looking for you for twenty-seven years.”
Ethan stepped closer.
“Are you my father?”
The stranger nodded.
Then he looked directly at Margaret.
“No.”
Ethan froze.
Daniel’s next words silenced the entire table.
“I’m his uncle.”
And the man Ethan’s mother had called his father…
was still alive.
