Chapter 3 - The Man in the Dark Suit
I stood up on legs that didn't feel like mine and looked out the front window.
A black car sat gleaming at the curb. A man in a dark suit was already coming up the walk. An older man stayed behind the wheel, watching the house through the windshield.
The man reached the porch and knocked.
I opened the door with the letter still crushed in my hand.
He was maybe fifty, in a wool coat that probably cost more than my car. His eyes were already wet.
"You must be the woman who raised my daughters," he said, and his voice cracked on the last word. "I'm Preston. I'm their father."
Behind me, in the kitchen, I heard Claire suck in a sharp breath.
"Please," he said. "I know I've got no right to ask you for anything. I just want a chance to know them."
"A chance," I said. "Ten years after Nora died."
His eyes dropped to the doormat.
"I was a coward. Back then my family ran everything, including me. That's not an excuse, I know that. I knew about the girls, and I stayed away anyway."
That threw me. I'd braced myself for a man full of excuses. Instead he'd just confirmed every word of Nora's letter, standing on my porch, without me saying a thing.
Maybe he really had changed, the way she always hoped.
"So what's different now?" I asked.
"My father stepped down six months ago. I run the company now. For the first time in my life, nobody gets to tell me what kind of family I'm allowed to have."
He told me about the business while he stood there. His grandfather founded Ashford Trust decades ago. The family name is still bolted to the front of the building downtown and printed on every ad they run — all of them going on about trust, tradition, generations looking after generations.
"The irony isn't lost on me," Preston said, with a tired little smile.
At the time I thought he meant the irony of inheriting a company built on family loyalty after turning his back on his own kids.
"I can't buy back the years I missed," he went on. "But I can make sure those girls never lie awake worrying about money again. College. Grad school. A down payment on a house someday. Whatever I can hand them while I try to earn back the things money won't cover."
I hated how hard that was to wave off.
Then he told me his company was throwing a gala that weekend.
"I'd like them there. Not as a photo op. As my daughters. I'm done pretending they don't exist."
Give him a chance.
"I'll tell them," I said. "The decision is theirs. Not mine, and not yours."
May you like
"Of course." He nodded fast. "Thank you for even hearing me out."
He walked back to the car, and I shut the door.
