I opened my eyes. Confused. That wasn’t what I expected.
“I need to tell you the truth before you go,” Marcus continued, squeezing my hand harder. “I need you to know what really happened after that night. What you never knew. What nobody ever told you.”
My heart nearly stopped when I saw what it was.
“You recognize this?” Marcus held up the photo. It showed a young woman holding a baby. Beautiful. Smiling. Happy.
“That’s my daughter,” he said. “Your granddaughter.”
The words didn’t make sense. My brain, foggy from medication and dying, couldn’t process them.
“What are you talking about?” I managed.
Marcus set the photo on my chest so I could see it clearly. “Robert, I need to take you back to 1981. Back to the night you tried to kill me. But I need to tell you the part you never knew.”
I remembered that night like it was yesterday. The rage. The hatred. The shotgun in my hands.
I was thirty-eight years old. A respected businessman. Deacon at my church. Pillar of the community. And my eighteen-year-old daughter Emily had just told me she was pregnant.
I’d forbidden Emily from seeing him. Told her those people were trash. Criminals. Beneath us. She’d promised to stay away.
But she’d lied. And now she was carrying his child.Continue reading…
