by Layne, Ivy
I had no idea what to make of that. My head spun, new information swirling in a whirlwind. I tried to reach out and grab bits and pieces, to assemble them into some kind of pattern that made sense.
If even one of those birth certificates was accurate then Trey was, in fact, Adam's biological father. Ongoing payments to LeAnne Gates filed with the birth certificate meant they went together. The birth certificate was missing the mother, but the payments… LeAnne Gates had to be Adam's mother. Why else was he paying her?
What if she hadn't wanted to give him up? The idea that Trey might have taken Adam from her was a stab to my heart. I felt it as a physical pain, stealing my breath. I leaned over, clutching my fist to my chest, struggling for air.
I couldn't give up my son. But what if he wasn't mine? What if she missed him? Mourned for him?
“Hey, hey, Lily, talk to me. Talk to me, baby.”
Knox pulled me into his lap, wiping tears from my wet cheeks with the side of his thumb.
“Lil, Adam's upstairs. You don't want him to see you crying. What's wrong? Are you upset about this stuff? The birth certificates and the payments? We have a certificate with your name on it and a place to start looking for the rest. Now I know what we're dealing with. This is good news. This is progress.”
“What if—” My throat locked on a sob of anguish. “But what if—” I swallowed hard. “What if she didn't want to give him up? What if she wants him back? She's his biological mom and if she wants him back—”
“No, no, baby. First of all, LeAnne Gates isn't Adam's mother. She's over sixty. But she should be able to tell us what happened. And even if her name is the one scratched out, I guarantee you, there is no way LeAnne fucking Gates wants Adam.”
I barely registered his arm squeezing me to his chest as his words penetrated the panic in my heart.
Knox knew her.
He'd recognized her name. That's what he meant when he said, 'Now I know what we're dealing with.’
Afraid to hope, afraid to let go of fear, I whispered, “How do you know? Maybe she loved Trey. I know he was having affairs. Maybe she thought he was going to leave me, that Adam would bring them together. Maybe—”
“No, Lil. I promise you. I know who LeAnne Gates is. She doesn't want Adam. Likely she sold him to Trey.”
Sold him? My jaw dropped and I stared at Knox, speechless. Sold him?
Knox sat back, wiping my cheeks again. “You know my father and Trey were involved in adoptions involving large amounts of money, right?” I nodded. I wasn't exactly sure what that meant, but he'd mentioned it.
Knox continued, “We haven't untangled the whole thing yet, but we know there were women they paid to act as surrogates. We've dealt with LeAnne before, and that woman doesn't have a maternal bone in her body. Believe me, the only thing she sees in any child is a paycheck.”
“I can't—”
Knox lifted a hand to cup my cheek, pulling me in for a soft kiss. Against my lips, he murmured, “No, you can't, Lily. You will never understand a woman like LeAnne Gates. You don't have it in you.”
He leaned back, sliding his hand across my shoulder, down my arm, to thread his fingers with mine.
“This is good news, Lily. I doubt LeAnne Gates has any rights to Adam, but she can tell us who might. She will. All we have to do is wave enough money in front of her and she'll give you anything you want.”
I let out a long breath. Only one good thing had come from my disastrous marriage to Trey.
Adam.
Once I'd learned what Trey had been up to, I'd seen the money he'd left me as a curse. I'd need some of it to get started in a new life. I wasn't sure I wanted the rest. But for this? To secure Adam's safety?
I'd spend every penny if I had to.
I'd never imagined my problem could be solved with something as simple as money. But then, money is only a simple answer when you have it.
“So, we go see this LeAnne Gates?” I asked.
“I'd like to talk to our lawyer first. But then, yeah, I think we go see LeAnne Gates.”
I nodded, my eyes falling on the still mostly full strong box. “So, if we have the birth certificate, and we have evidence of payments to LeAnne, what's the rest of this stuff?”
“I don't know, let's find out.”
Chapter Thirty
Lily
Knox pulled out another large, white envelope and checked the contents. More notations like those he'd said indicated payments to LeAnne Gates, but if the notes listed the recipient, neither of us recognized who it was.
Knox set it aside and picked up another envelope, this one manila, sealed shut with two folded-down aluminum prongs. Nothing was written on the front or back to indicate what might be inside.
Knox pulled out three sheets of paper. The first was a receipt that appeared to come from an auction house in New Jersey. Trenkley Auctions. I'd never heard of it, but I recognized the item in the photograph.
A small, dark blue box with gold detailing, a frame of sparkling faceted stones running along each edge of the lid, a larger stone on each corner.
In the center of the lid more sparkling stones surrounded a miniature oil portrait of a bearded man from another age. I didn't know enough about art or history to place the box, but his dress wasn't modern. Nothing about the small box was modern.
Until this moment, I'd completely forgotten about it.
It used to be right here in Trey's office, on the table beneath the window by the armchair. When had it disappeared? When Trey was alive, I didn't come in here much. Seeing the box in the grainy photograph on the receipt, I realized I hadn't seen it in over a year, maybe more.
Knox ran his finger around the frame of the image. “Holy shit. I wondered what happened to this.”
“What do you mean? That was Trey's. He used to keep it in here and—”
Knox's eyes sharpened on my face. “And? Do you remember when he got it? When it disappeared? Are you sure it's not here anymore?”
Flustered, I tried to think. “When he got it…um, Adam was still a baby. He put it on that table.”
Knox and I both looked at the table across the room. An antique, the three-legged side table had a circular top of polished wood. It held a lamp aimed at a small oil painting on a stand. Nothing else. The spot where the box had been was empty.
“Three years ago sound right?” Knox asked, his finger on the date at the top of the receipt.
“Yes, that's around when I first saw it. I don't know when it disappeared. It would have to be before he died because I didn't do anything with it. I forgot about it until I saw that picture. How do you know what it is?”
“It used to be my father's. And this—” He pointed to the amount at the bottom of the receipt.
$39,872.56 Almost forty thousand dollars. Wow. Maybe the sparkly stones on the top had been real.
“This—” Knox tapped that number again, “is way fucking off.”
“Too much?” I asked.
Knox's laugh had a tinge of bitterness. “No. Way too fucking little. Do you know what this is?”
“An ugly box?” I asked, trying to cut the mood with a joke. Knox's eyes crinkled at the corners when he shook his head.
“It's not the prettiest thing I've ever seen, I'll give you that. It's also Faberge. And not just Faberge. It's Imperial Faberge. See this guy?”
He tapped his finger on the photograph of the miniature portrait on the top of the box. A man stared back at us, with a neatly trimmed beard, an impressive mustache, and hard eyes. A row of medals decorated his formal red jacket.
“This guy was the Emperor in his military uniform. Faberge designed it specifically for his birthday.”
Faberge? Imperial Faberge? As in, that ugly little box had belonged to an Emperor of Russia? And Trey just put it out on the table in his office with a toddler w
alking around? I looked back at the receipt. $39,872.56. That was underpriced?
“How much is it worth?”
“In today's market? I don't know exactly, but when my dad had it, he told me the last Imperial Faberge snuff box that sold at auction was in the UK. It went for well over two million pounds and that was more than a decade ago. This one? Hard to say. The art market changes all the time. A fuck ton more than forty thousand dollars. At least a few million US.”
Knox set the receipt aside, scanning the two pages that had been in the envelope beneath it.
“Motherfucker.” His fingers stabbed the lines of numbers. “Recognize these?”
“No. Should I?”
“Those are the account numbers Lucas found on Sunday. He's still trying to track them down.”
“What does this mean? This is your dad's box? How did Trey end up with it?”
“No fucking clue. My guess?”
“Yeah?” I was glad Knox had a guess because I was all out.
He traced his fingers down the lines of numbers, then looked back at the receipt. “My guess would be that my dad was supposed to give Trey part of what's in those accounts. Instead of giving Trey his share of the cash, he gave him this, selling it through the auction house.”
“The auction house was in on it? Like money laundering?” I asked, trying to wrap my head around what Knox proposed.
“Exactly like money laundering. But Trey didn't get the provenance because they didn't represent it properly in the auction. And if he didn't get it from my dad, it's probably because my dad never had it in the first place. I'll have to check with my brothers, but I'd bet this box originally belonged to Sergey Tsepov.”
“If we knew where it was you could offer it to Tsepov to get him to leave you alone. There's no clue in there as to what Trey did with it?”
“Nope.”
“Crap.” So far, Trey's strongbox was filled with more questions than answers.
Knox returned the auction receipt to the envelope, resealed it with the little silver prongs, and placed it on top of the envelope holding Adam's birth certificates.
Beneath that were more loose papers, documents, a wad of cash wrapped in a paper band as if it had come from the bank. Knox flipped through and murmured under his breath, “About twenty grand.”
What the hell, Trey?
Why was twenty grand sitting in a box in his desk? Knox tucked the money into the side of the box and lifted out another manila envelope, again sealed with two silver prongs, this one bulging in the center. Knox opened it and out slid a stack of letters.
All of them had been opened, the tops of the envelopes jagged and torn. Knox turned over the first. My heart stopped when I saw the address in the upper left corner.
Rose Adams.
Hanover, New Hampshire.
My mother. The letter was addressed to me. I snatched it up, checking the date. A month after my wedding. My mom had written me a letter?
Knox flipped through the rest of the envelopes. He reached the end and handed them to me in a stack. “All addressed to you. Based on the postmarks, they stopped coming a year ago.”
My hands shaking, I pulled the letter out of the first envelope.
Lily,
Your father and I received your wedding announcement. I wish that I could tell you I was happy for you. I can't. I can't help but feel this is a terrible mistake.
I know what your father said, but if you want to come home, if you ever need to come home, I'm here.
I hope things with Trey work out.
Love,
Mom.
It wasn't an apology for kicking me out, but it was far more than I'd expected. Hands shaking, eyes blurred with tears, I slid the letter back into the envelope and turned it facedown on the desk. Knox watched over my shoulder as I opened the second envelope, postmarked a few months later.
Lily,
I hope you're well. I haven't heard from you. I know we parted on unpleasant terms, and I know I was vocal about my unhappiness over your marriage.
What's done is done. I miss you. I understand if you don't want to visit, but please write or call. I've never gone this long without seeing my little girl.
Love,
Mom
“You didn't know she wrote?” Knox asked quietly.
My throat tight with the tears streaming down my cheeks, I shook my head.
My father had told me not to come home if I married Trey. I thought he'd meant it. Maybe he did. Clearly, my mom felt differently.
At the thought of her beating back her fierce pride and reaching out, then getting no response, I choked on a sob.
My mother was bold, strong, and, much like my dad, she hated to admit when she was wrong. She must have missed me terribly to write these neutral, vaguely apologetic letters. I placed the second one on top of the first and opened the next letter, dated almost three years after my marriage.
Dear Lily,
You haven't written me back. You must think I deserve that after the way your father and I behaved when you got married. Maybe I do.
Your life is yours to live. Someday, if you have a child yourself, you'll understand the overwhelming need to protect and how it can be so misguided. My own parents never spoke to me again after I married your father. I missed them every day.
I'm ashamed that we did the same thing to you.
I was wrong to let your father throw you out.
I was wrong not to come after you.
I won't intrude on your life by showing up where I'm not wanted, but please know, Lily, your father and I miss you so much. Please forgive us.
Love,
Mom
I slid the letter back into its envelope and spread the first two letters out on the desk in front of me. Both the same address, the place we'd lived when we first married. The third letter came to our address in Black Rock.
How would she have known? Every letter had been opened and read by my dead husband. He'd known how deeply I'd grieved the loss of my family and yet he'd hidden these letters. Why would he do that to me?
I worked my way through the rest of the letters, tears streaming from my eyes as my mother grew more and more desperate in her pleas. The final letter began,
My dearest Lily,
I would give anything to hear your voice again. I received your letter. It's not like the woman I know to be so unforgiving. We were wrong. We want to make amends. Please reconsider and accept our apology.
As you've asked, this will be the last time I write. I love you. Your father loves you. We want nothing more than to see you again. We were wrong in so many ways. Don't make us pay for the rest of our lives.
All my love, always,
Mom
“I never—” I couldn't finish the words. I'd never written to my mother. Trey must have—
I closed my fingers around the letter and gave into the sobs clawing at my throat. All these years, I'd hated myself for not being good enough, hated them for not loving me anyway.
I'd stayed with Trey in part because leaving would be admitting I'd sacrificed my family for nothing. I'd stayed because I thought I had nowhere to go. No one who wanted me.
As soon as that thought crossed my mind, I knew why Trey kept the letters from me. As long as I only had him, I'd stay. Trey had given me Adam when he had no interest in being a father because a child would tie me to him.
Why? I would have sworn he didn't love me anymore. Why not let me go?
I didn't have the answer for that. I probably never would. Trey never did like for anyone else to play with his toys. Maybe it was as simple as that. He didn't want me, but he didn't want anyone else to have me either.
I clutched the last letter in my hand, turning my face into Knox's broad chest, and bawled like a child. I cried for the lost years, for my mother's br
oken heart and my own. For all the time I'd wasted married to a man who'd given me my son but broken my heart over and over.
Knox held me on his lap, rubbing my back, surrounding me with strength. When my tears tapered off, he said, “Do you want to go see them?”
I nodded into his shirt. When I thought I could speak, I whispered, “Soon. Not yet, but soon.”
“Then we'll go. As soon as you're ready, we'll go,” Knox promised.
As soon as I was ready.
My mother's final letter crumpled in my fisted hand, I thought Now and Never. All these letters from my mother, and nothing from my father. It didn't matter.
I couldn't get my bearings. Too much was changing. Everything I thought I knew was wrong.
Eventually, I got off Knox's lap and pretended to function like a normal person. I went through the rest of the day in a haze, packing without thinking, my mind on those letters.
On Trey.
On Knox and LeAnne Gates.
On the Faberge snuff box worth millions that Trey had left sitting on a table like it was just another knick-knack.
I was looking into a fun house mirror reflection of my life, and I recognized nothing. Knox, seeing my distraction, put Adam to bed while I was still shoving things into boxes in my closet.
He joined me in my room, closing and locking the door, setting the monitor on the dresser with the volume turned up, the sounds of a lullaby drifting through the room in crackly, ghostly notes.
I didn't want to talk. I didn't want to think. I just wanted Knox. Knox, who hadn't lied to me. Not really. Knox, who hadn't hurt me. Knox, who'd done nothing but protect me, body and heart.
I didn't know how to say how grateful I was. I knew how to show it. I pushed him back on the bed and climbed on top, straddling his hips, my hands desperate, yanking at his shirt, trying to pull it over his head.
He stopped me, his fingers braceleting my wrists, and met my eyes, searching for something. He must have found it because he released my hands and cupped my face in his.
“Lily, everything's going to be okay. I promise.”
I gave a jerky nod, words piling up and tangling behind my tongue. I didn't know what to say, how to say it. I tugged on his T-shirt again. Knox did a half-curl off the mattress, reaching behind his neck to tug his T-shirt over his head. He tossed it to the floor and cupped my face in his hands one more time.