I read it again.
There is one more truth she doesn’t know.
Chloe sat upright.
Helen Mercer leaned forward.
The apartment became silent.
I kept reading.
Grandma believes I never told anyone who your father was.
That isn’t exactly true.
My pulse thundered.
I told one person.
Below that was a name.
I stared at it.
I knew the name.
Everyone in Riverside did.
My hands began shaking.
Grandma stood.
“Noah?”
I couldn’t speak.
Chloe took the letter.
Her eyes widened.
“No way.”
“What?” Grandma demanded.
Chloe looked at Helen.
Helen looked equally stunned.
The name written there belonged to Principal Gabriel Alvarez.
My principal.
The man who had just stood on the prom stage talking about Grandma.
“No.”
Grandma grabbed the letter.
She read.
Her face drained of color.
Emily’s letter continued.
His name is Gabriel Alvarez.
He was seventeen.
He doesn’t know I kept the pregnancy.
Grandma sank into her chair.
I felt the room tilt.
Principal Alvarez was forty-five now.
He had been principal of Riverside for six years.
I’d known him since middle school.
He’d written one of my college recommendation letters.
I suddenly remembered every strange conversation.
Every time he’d stopped me in the hallway.
Every time he’d told me I reminded him of someone.
A horrifying thought struck me.
“Did he know?”
Grandma shook her head.
“I swear to you, no.”
I looked at the clock.
3:07 a.m.
Then at my phone.
There were seventeen messages.
One was from an unknown number.
Noah, this is Gabriel Alvarez. Please call me when you can. There is something I need to ask you about your mother.
I stared at it.
Chloe whispered, “How would he know?”
No one answered.
Then Helen pointed at the television.
A local news clip from prom was playing silently.
Somebody’s video of my speech had already been posted online.
The caption identified Grandma.
And my mother.
EMILY BELL’S SON DEFENDS JANITOR GRANDMOTHER AT RIVERSIDE PROM.
Alvarez had seen it.
Maybe he had heard my speech and recognized the name before leaving.
Maybe he’d gone home, opened an old box of his own, and realized something.
I called.
He answered before the first ring finished.
“Noah?”
His voice sounded broken.
“Did you know my mother?”
Silence.
Then breathing.
“Yes.”
Grandma covered her mouth.
“How well?”
Another silence.
“Very well.”
“Were you my father?”
He began crying.
Not discreetly.
I could hear it through the phone.
“I don’t know,” he said.
“But I think I might be.”
We met the next afternoon.
Not at school.
At a park.
Alvarez arrived alone.
Without a suit, he looked different.
Smaller.
Older.
Human.
He carried a box.
He stopped when he saw me.
For a long time, he simply stared.
Then he looked at Chloe.
“Twins,” he whispered.
His knees almost buckled.
We sat.
He told us everything.
He and Emily had dated secretly during senior year.
Grandma knew she’d had a boyfriend but not who.
They broke up after graduation when Gabriel’s family moved suddenly to Arizona to care for his sick father.
Emily never told him she was pregnant.
“She wrote me once,” he said.
“I never got another letter.”
Grandma frowned.
“She said you stopped answering.”
“I didn’t.”
Another lost connection.
Another eighteen-year accident.
He opened his box.
Inside were letters.
All addressed to Emily.
All marked RETURN TO SENDER.
Grandma stared.
“We moved apartments.”
“I didn’t know.”
He wiped his eyes.
“I came back two years later. Someone told me Emily had died.”
“You never asked how?” Grandma said.
“I did.”
