Hope's Discovery (THE MATCHMAKER TRILOGY) (19 page)

Hope gave a nod to the box. “What is this?”

“It’s what I have.”

Carissa took the lid off the box, and Hope leaned forward to look inside. There were a handful of photographs of Carissa as a little girl. A few scribbled drawings she’d made with crayons.

Carissa pulled out a large envelope, which was tucked inside. She handed it to Hope.

“Dad gave this to me when I was eighteen. It’s between you and me now. I don’t think he ever even told Mom about it.”

Hope opened the envelope with shaky fingers and let the contents slide onto the table. She let out a sigh. It was another secret between her family.

There was the original copy of Mandy’s death certificate, copies of the newspaper clippings from her death notices, and two envelopes with Carissa’s name on them.

“What are these?” Hope held up the envelopes.

“This one is a letter from Katie,” she said as she took the envelope with their grandmother’s handwriting on it. “She wrote it about the time you were born, but I didn’t get it until she died. Mom found it in her things.”

Carissa opened the letter and scanned her eyes over it before handing it to Hope.

My Dearest Carissa,

Today you became my legal great-granddaughter. I am so pleased to call you that, though I have felt that you held that place in my heart since you arrived when you were seven years old. Now we have your sister too, and I consider myself doubly blessed. I want you to know how much I love you and I want you to make sure your sister knows how much I love her too. I may not be around long enough to let her know myself.

Hope wiped at the tears that had run down her face, and looked up to see Carissa wiping her eyes too.

“Yes, I’m crying. I know what the
 
thing says,” she said with a smile. Carissa nodded to the letter. “Keep going.”

I wanted to tell you that I’ve done something, and perhaps it was a mistake, but I thought you should know. After Hope’s birth and your mother’s death, I wrote to Mandy’s mother and told her that Mandy had died. I thought she might have liked to know. I told her that she’d had another baby too.

As of yet I haven’t heard from her.

The reason I’m telling you this is in case my fate to join my Charlie and my dearest friend Millie is soon, I wanted you to know what I’d done. If Mrs. Marlow comes looking for you, you’ll know how she found you.

I don’t know how anyone could know they have granddaughters as wonderful as you and your sister and not want to meet you. I suppose that is her loss and my gain.

I love you and your sister very much. I want only the best for you both.

Love,

Grandma Katie

Hope put the letter down in front of her and ran her fingers over it. She swallowed the last of her tears, missing her great-grandmother.

“So Mandy’s mother knows about us?”

Carissa nodded. “Feeling a little let down?”

Hope shrugged. She wasn’t sure what to feel.

“Here,” Carissa said, handing her the other envelope. “This one’s from Dad.”

Hope opened the envelope with their father’s handwriting on the front.

Carissa scooted her chair closer to Hope. “Since Mandy died a few months before I turned eighteen, he waited to close out some of her things. He turned power of attorney over to me so I could do it. I think he thought it would help me not be so angry at her. That’s the book to her savings account. When I closed it out there was enough money for me to go to college on.”

Hope remained silent and again her hands began to shake.

Carissa let out a breath. “I took the money. I was mad. That’s how I paid for college because I felt she owed it to me. She’d pawned me off from the moment I was born until I found Dad, and then she vanished a few years later. I thought I’d take what I could. But Hope, I never thought to find out why she had that much money in her account.”

“Do you think this is where the safe-deposit box is?”

“It would be a great place to start looking. And…” She smiled. “The bank isn’t in Kansas City, so Trevor might have never found it.”

“Where’s the bank?”

“Jefferson City.”

Hope listened as Carissa made the phone call to the bank where she’d closed out Mandy’s accounts almost twenty-three years ago. The man on the phone confirmed the number Carissa had read to him was an account number, but without identification and proof of power of attorney, he wouldn’t confirm that the number belonged to Mandy.

Carissa reached for Hope’s hand and gave it a squeeze. “We have a two-and-a-half-hour drive ahead of us. We should make it by one o’clock.”

Hope nodded. Her mouth had gone dry.

Twenty minutes from Jefferson City, Hope’s phone rang. Carissa shook her head before Hope answered the phone. “Don’t tell him what we’re doing. Not yet.”

Hope nodded, then answered. “Hello, handsome.”

“I called your shop. Your mom said she was covering for you today. Are you okay?” There was a hint of worry in his voice and she didn’t like it.

“I’m fine. Carissa and I are spending the day together. You know, girl stuff.”

“Sounds nice. I had some man time myself last night. Cost me fifty bucks. Hurts more when you play cards and lose to your own father.”

Hope laughed. She was missing him terribly. “When do you get in tomorrow?”

“Ten. I know you’re working so I’ll either get a car or a cab.”

“Dad said he’d cover for me. I’ll be there. I’ve missed you too much not to be waiting for you.”

“I never thought I’d have someone who longed to pick me up from the airport.”

“You have me,” she said softly then said goodbye as Carissa took the exit from the highway that would lead them toward the bank.

“Keep your eyes peeled,” Carissa instructed as she slowly drove down the street in search of the bank. “Some of these buildings weren’t here twenty-three years ago.”

“So, seriously, there was enough money for you to go through school on?”

“Seriously. There was over a hundred thousand in the account when I closed it. I never told Dad just how much was in there. I put a lot of it away, paid my way through school, and when I was ready to open the school I used the money I had left to put a down payment on the building.”

That was a lot of money for a woman who’d lived in a cheap motel.

“There it is,” Carissa said as she made the turn into the parking lot.

Hope’s heart rate picked up as they neared the bank. “I’m afraid to go in here.”

“Why? She can’t hurt us know.”

Hope nodded and turned to her sister. “What do we do if we find something?”

“Then we deal with it.” She covered Hope’s hand with hers. “Whatever we find is only material and belongs to someone who didn’t care about us. Let’s go see what it is.”

Hope nodded in agreement and then raised her hand to the charm that hung from her neck. The Saint Nicholas medal had kept her mother, sister, and her safe for years. She gave it a squeeze, hoping it would still work even though she was grown.

Peter Westfall met them in the lobby of the bank and escorted them to his office.

“I have her death certificate as well as the power of attorney papers with me,” Carissa said as she laid them on his desk. “She had an account here that I closed, about twenty-three years ago.”

“But you didn’t close out the safe-deposit box?”

“I didn’t know about it until we found the key. I don’t even know if it’s from this bank. It was just a place to start.”

“The number you gave me this morning on the phone did match a box we have here. Do you have the key with you?”

Hope reached into her purse and pulled it out. She set it on the desk and Peter Westfall nodded.

“Wonderful. Well, let me get the other key and we’ll go into the vault and get your box.”

He left them in the office while he went for the other key. Hope grabbed for Carissa’s hand. “Why am I so scared?”

“It’s okay. Maybe the box is empty,” Carissa offered as Peter returned to the office and they followed him out.

They followed the man into the vault, passing a security guard at the door. Peter put in the key from the bank, and Carissa, with shaky hands, inserted the other key into the box. Each of them turned their keys and the box slid into Peter’s hands. He handed the box to Carissa.

Carissa shot Hope a glance and she knew it wasn’t empty.

Peter showed them to an adjacent room where they could open the box and go through it in private. He left them to the contents, shutting the door behind him.

Both women stood and looked down and the closed box. Hope didn’t want to be the first to see what their birth mother was hiding.

“Okay.” Carissa blew out a breath. “Here we go.”

She slowly slid the lid from the box and Hope held her breath. Inside the safe-deposit box were stock certificates. Carissa pulled them out and laid them to the side. There was another bundle of money and a letter addressed to “My Daughters.”

Carissa lifted the letter out of the box and her hands, unsteady and shaking, rattled the envelope.

They exchanged glances again.

“Open it. Fast,” Hope said, her own lip quivering.

Carissa started to run her finger through the envelope that bared the name of the bank. She pulled the letter from the envelope and the letterhead had the name of the bank as well.

She cleared her throat and began.

To My Beautiful Daughters,

As I write this, I am sitting in a little room at the bank filling this safe-deposit box that I hope someday you will find. I know that I will never return here.

I am seven months pregnant with a baby that I know will be a girl. I am headed to Kansas City to give birth to her and convince a wonderful man to raise her. I have done all I can to ensure that he will be able to take her without problems. I have changed my name to match his, and if I can convince him to be her father, he will only have to carry her out of the hospital and give her a wonderful life.

I was told that if I carried the baby to term I would die. I feel weak and I’m sure this to be very true. I have stopped taking my medications because after she is born, I do not want to live.

I have chosen a path for my life that has left me unhappy. I have disgraced my family and have lost all connection to them.

Carissa, if you are reading this, please know that I did love you. You were an amazing gift to me that I didn’t respect.

She stopped reading, took a breath, and wiped her eyes. Hope gave her a nod and urged her to continue.

I know since I walked away from you, leaving you with your father, you’ve blossomed into a beautiful woman. I’ve heard you play your cello and I’ve seen you turn into a beautiful woman. I’ve never been too far away.

“Oh, wow!” Carissa handed the letter to Hope. “Finish this,” she said.

Hope nodded and took the letter.

The baby I am carrying is your sister. And I hope that you and your father will consider raising her so that you will be together. This baby will need her family. I will be gone, and her father does not know about her.

I’ve done something I’m not proud of. I had an affair with a married man. He’s someone I’ve known my whole life. He was my father’s business partner.

Hope looked up from the letter, realizing Mandy had told them who her birth father was. Even without a name they had somewhere to start looking.

He gave me the stocks for the company because he felt I was owed them after my father died. I hope they will be worth something to you someday. The other money that I have put into an account, and what I have stored here, was given to me by his wife to stay away from him and never mention the baby. I have sunk low enough to have accepted her bribe and to have run away. I was afraid that if I didn’t disappear, she would have had me killed and that would have killed my baby too.

I know I will die, but I want my baby to live.

Hope stopped and put her hand to her chest. “She was protecting me.”

Carissa nodded. “She’d cleaned up. I know her conscience played a big role in her giving you to us, but I didn’t know someone had paid her off to do it.”

“I’m glad they did,” Hope said, covering her sister’s hand with her own. She took a deep breath and continued to read the letter.

Carissa, I’m sorry for everything I have ever done. To have been fair to you I should have told David about you from the start and let him have you. He wanted to keep you and I lied to him. I hurt you and I’m so very sorry. I hope you can accept my apology.

Please take care of my baby and love her. She is your sister and I know that will mean something to you.

I love you both. I’m sorry I will never get to know the baby that grows inside of me. I’m sure if all goes well and she is raised a Kendal she will be perfect too.

Love, Mandy

They both sat silently. Hope tried to hold back the wall of tears, and watched as her sister did the same, but eventually they broke through.