Chapter 13 - The Woman Who Had Been Waiting Too
The letter did not predict romance.
Reality was stranger and simpler.
My father had known Claire’s mother.
After Catherine disappeared, Samuel helped the Dawson family relocate temporarily.
Claire had been seventeen.
I had been eighteen.
We had met once.
Neither of us remembered.
Then Catherine produced a photograph.
A community fundraiser.
Claire stood beside a battered wooden chair.
I was kneeling beside it with a toolbox.
“You fixed that chair,” Claire whispered.
Apparently, I had.
Her mother could not afford to replace a dining set damaged during their move.
My father volunteered us.
Claire had watched me repair it.
According to Catherine, she spent the drive home talking about “the quiet boy who made broken things look easy.”
Claire covered her face.
“I was seventeen.”
“I’m enjoying this enormously.”
“You shouldn’t.”
The letter from my father was written to Catherine.
Samuel believed the truth would eventually surface.
He asked that if Claire and I ever became involved in the investigation, we be told our families had once protected one another.
That was all.
Catherine had manipulated the seating arrangement because she thought we deserved to know.
“She didn’t expect us to date,” Claire said.
Catherine smiled.
“No. That part was embarrassingly efficient.”
Claire threw a pillow at her.
I should have been bothered.
Instead, I found the entire thing strangely comforting.
Fate had not delivered Claire.
People had arranged a chair.
Claire had chosen to sit.
I had chosen to speak.
Everything after that belonged to us.
Months passed.
Robert pleaded guilty to obstruction-related charges.
His cooperation helped prosecutors unravel the remaining financial network.
Margaret began therapy.
Catherine and Claire learned how to be sisters again.
It was not magically easy.
Claire was angry.
Catherine carried guilt.
Sometimes they fought.
Sometimes they went three days without speaking.
Then one would show up with coffee.
Healing looked less like a movie and more like stubborn repetition.
Lauren and Grant converted Hawthorne into a charitable trust.
I helped restore the west wing.
Claire handled communications for the foundation.
Working together tested our new relationship.
She hated my habit of postponing invoices.
I hated her habit of scheduling conversations.
“You cannot calendar an argument.”
“I can if you keep avoiding it.”
She was usually right.
I hated that too.
Six months after the wedding, Claire found me restoring the chair from Table Twelve.
“You stole wedding furniture?”
“Grant gave it to me.”
“Why?”
“He said it had caused enough trouble.”
She ran her fingers over the repaired frame.
“What are you doing with it?”
“Keeping it.”
“That seems sentimental.”
“I contain multitudes.”
She smiled.
Then noticed the second chair.
Same style.
Restored to match.
“Daniel?”
I suddenly became nervous.
Not engagement-ring nervous.
I had learned something from Lauren.
Love did not need to sprint to prove it was moving.
I simply handed Claire a key.
“To my house.”
She stared at it.
“You’re asking me to move in?”
“I’m asking you to stop keeping half your clothes there while pretending you don’t live there.”
“That is less romantic.”
“I made you a chair.”
“That helps.”
She kissed me.
Then whispered yes.
That night, while moving boxes from Claire’s apartment, we found one belonging to Catherine.
It had been mixed with Claire’s possessions after their reunion.
Inside were old records.
Claire called Catherine.
“Can I open these?”
Catherine hesitated.
“Which box?”
Claire described it.
Silence.
“Don’t open it.”
Claire and I looked at each other.
“Why?”
“I’m coming over.”
She arrived twenty minutes later.
She took the box.
But its bottom tore.
Documents scattered across the floor.
One photograph landed face-up.
Lauren’s mother stood beside my father.
They were holding a baby.
On the back was a date.
My birthday.
I stared at Catherine.
“What is this?”
Catherine’s face went pale.
Before she could answer, someone knocked.
I opened the door.
Rebecca stood outside.
She saw the photograph.
May you like
Then she whispered the sentence that changed everything.
“Daniel, that baby isn’t you.”
