PART 11 — THE SECOND MAN
Alyssa stared at her mother. “Who?” Vivian’s hand was still resting on the cassette player. Nobody moved. “Mom.” Vivian looked toward the window. “Please don’t make me say it.” Alyssa laughed once. There was no humor in it. “You made Candace prove who her father was in a room full of relatives.”
Vivian flinched. “You don’t get privacy now.” I almost expected Vivian to fight. Instead, she sat down. Her shoulders collapsed. Then she whispered: “William.” The room went silent. I frowned. “What?” Alyssa stared at her. “You mean Dad?” Vivian nodded. Alyssa shook her head. “But the DNA test said—” “I know what the test said.” “Then what are you talking about?”
Vivian covered her face. “Thirty years ago, I didn’t know.” 
Nobody spoke. Then the pieces began rearranging themselves in my head. Thomas. William. Vivian. The pregnancy. Alyssa. “You were sleeping with both of them?” I asked. Vivian closed her eyes.
“Yes.” Grandma made a sound of disgust. Alyssa looked like she’d been struck. “You told me Dad was the love of your life.” “He was.”
“While you were sleeping with Thomas?” “It wasn’t that simple.” “It sounds incredibly simple.” Samuel Greene reached toward the cassette player. Vivian grabbed his wrist.
“Don’t.”
He looked at her hand.
She released him.
Samuel pressed PLAY.
Static filled the room again.
Then my mother’s voice.
“Thomas thinks Alyssa is his baby.”
Vivian’s younger voice answered.
“He doesn’t know.”
“Does William?”
Silence.
Then:
“William believes she’s his.”
My mother’s voice became colder.
“Believes?”
Vivian said nothing.
Rebecca continued.
“You don’t know which one fathered her.”
A long silence.
Then Vivian whispered:
“No.”
Alyssa started crying.
The tape continued.
My mother’s voice softened unexpectedly.
“Then tell them.”
Vivian laughed bitterly.
“And lose everything?”
I looked at Vivian.
She couldn’t meet my eyes.
On the tape, Rebecca answered:
“This isn’t about money.”
“Easy for you to say.”
“What does that mean?”
Vivian’s younger voice became angry.
“You have William. You have the house. You have the company. You have the perfect daughter.”
My mother interrupted.
“Leave Candace out of this.”
“Everyone leaves Candace out of nothing.”
I felt cold.
Even then.
Even when I was nine.
Vivian had resented me.
Rebecca’s voice sharpened.
“She’s a child.”
Then Vivian said the sentence that finally explained thirty years of cruelty.
“She’s the reason William will never choose Alyssa first.”
The tape seemed to stop the entire room.
Alyssa slowly lifted her head.
Vivian began shaking.
My mother answered:
“Alyssa is a baby, Vivian. This isn’t a competition.”
“It will be when William dies.”
Mr. Bennett leaned forward.
Rebecca’s voice:
“What are you talking about?”
Then Vivian:
“William told me everything goes to his children.”
My mother’s answer came immediately.
“Candace is his child.”
Silence.
Then Vivian said:
“Maybe.”
My stomach turned.
There it was.
Thirty years ago.
The seed.
Before I ever left home.
Before Alyssa learned to call me a stray.
Vivian had already begun questioning whether I belonged.
My mother slammed something onto the table.
“Say that again.”
Vivian didn’t.
Rebecca continued.
“Candace is William’s daughter. And you know it.”
Then Vivian said something strange.
“William knows what you told him.”
The tape crackled.
My mother became very quiet.
“What is that supposed to mean?”
No answer.
Then Rebecca:
“Did Thomas tell you something?”
More static.
A chair moved.
And Vivian’s younger voice said:
“Ask your brother where he was the weekend Candace was conceived.”
My entire body went numb.
“No.”
I stood.
“No.”
Samuel stopped the tape.
Nobody looked at me.
I stared at Vivian.
“You thought Thomas might be my father too?”
Vivian shook her head quickly.
“I didn’t know anything.”
“You spent my childhood telling everyone I wasn’t Dad’s daughter because Thomas told you something?”
“He implied something.”
“What?”
Vivian looked at Grandma.
Grandma seemed confused.
“Thomas claimed he and Rebecca had been together somewhere around the time you were conceived.”
I stared at her.
My own uncle?
“No.”
Grandma stood.
“That’s impossible.”
Vivian looked at her.
“You weren’t there.”
“I don’t need to have been there. Rebecca would never—”
“That’s not what I mean.”
Vivian wiped her face.
“Thomas never claimed he slept with Rebecca.”
I froze.
“Then what did he claim?”
Vivian swallowed.
“That William couldn’t be your biological father.”
Mr. Bennett frowned.
“On what basis?”
Vivian looked toward me.
“Thomas said William had been told years earlier that he couldn’t father children.”
Nobody moved.
Then Alyssa whispered:
“But Dad thought I was his.”
Vivian nodded.
“That was why Rebecca and Thomas fought.”
Grandma looked horrified.
“William was infertile?”
“I don’t know.”
I thought about my DNA result.
99.99%.
Whatever Thomas had claimed, it was wrong.
Or someone had lied.
Mr. Bennett seemed to reach the same conclusion.
“Candace’s DNA result establishes William’s paternity.”
“I know.”
“Then why did Thomas say otherwise?”
Vivian stared at the cassette player.
“I never found out.”
Samuel spoke for the first time in several minutes.
“Rebecca did.”
Everyone turned.
“What?”
He reached into one of his old folders.
“Four days after she gave me this recording, Rebecca called me.”
My heart accelerated.
“What did she say?”
“She told me she’d discovered why Thomas had been spreading the story that William couldn’t have children.”
“Why?”
Samuel removed a yellowed sheet of paper.
“She said someone had shown Thomas a medical record.”
Mr. Bennett leaned closer.
“What record?”
“A fertility report supposedly belonging to William Harper.”
“Supposedly?”
Samuel nodded.
“Rebecca believed it was forged.”
I stared at him.
“By Thomas?”
“No.”
“Then who?”
Samuel looked toward Vivian.
She shook her head.
“Don’t look at me. I never saw it.”
Samuel continued.
“Rebecca said she knew who created it.”
My heart pounded.
“Who?”
“I don’t know.”
My frustration exploded.
“You keep saying you don’t know!”
“Because she refused to tell me over the telephone.”
Samuel’s voice softened.
“She said she’d bring me proof the following Monday.”
I already knew what was coming.
“She died before Monday.”
“Yes.”
The room fell silent.
Then Samuel pushed the yellow sheet toward me.
It wasn’t the medical record.
It was his handwritten note from Rebecca’s call.
At the bottom, he’d underlined one sentence twice.
I read it.
R.H. says forged fertility report connects to H.I. ownership dispute. Says W.H. does not know yet.
Harper Industries.
Again.
Everything kept coming back to the company.
I looked at Mr. Bennett.
“Who benefits if people believe Dad couldn’t have biological children?”
He didn’t answer immediately.
Then his expression changed.
“Potentially someone challenging the succession of his ownership.”
Alyssa looked at Vivian.
But I didn’t.
Because suddenly I remembered something from Dad’s study.
The company photographs.
Old annual reports.
One man appeared beside Dad in almost every photograph from those years.
Dad’s business partner.
A man whose name hadn’t been mentioned once since I came home.
I looked at Grandma.
“What happened to Charles Mercer?”
Her face changed.
Mr. Bennett looked up sharply.
Vivian whispered:
“No.”
There it was again.
That fear.
“Who is Charles Mercer?” Alyssa asked.
I remembered him vaguely.
Expensive suits.
Silver watch.
Always bringing Dad documents to sign.
Grandma answered.
“He founded Harper Industries with William and Rebecca.”
Mr. Bennett added:
“And thirty years ago, he owned the only block of shares large enough to challenge Rebecca’s twenty-five percent.”
My pulse quickened.
“Where is he now?”
Nobody answered.
Then Rosa, who had remained quiet near the doorway, finally spoke.
“He’s alive.”
I turned.
She looked directly at me.
“And he came to this house the night before your mother died.”
Vivian stood.
“That proves nothing.”
Rosa nodded.
“No.”
Then she looked at me.
“But what he left behind might.”
“What did he leave?”
Rosa’s eyes moved toward Rebecca’s green box.
“A document.”
I stared at the box.
“We already emptied it.”
“Not all of it.”
Rosa reached beneath the leather lining.
Her fingers found a tiny metal tab.
She pulled.
The bottom lifted.
A hidden compartment opened.
Inside lay one yellow envelope.
Across the front, in my mother’s handwriting, were five words:
IF CHARLES DENIES IT — OPEN THIS.
And underneath the envelope was a photocopy of a medical report bearing my father’s name.
At the bottom of the page, one word had been written in red ink. FORGED.
