My Fiancée Dumped Mop Water on the Housekeeper—Then I Learned Why She Was So Desperate to Humiliate Her

Grant had spent his whole life believing two things were simple.

First, that Theodore Parker had been a difficult but honorable man. Second, that Helen Parker had always just been part of the house, part of the background, so constant that she seemed permanent.

Now both beliefs were beginning to crack.

He led Helen and Maya into the small morning room off the foyer, away from Vanessa for a moment, though he left the doors open where he could still see her standing in the hall. He set the photograph on the table and knelt in front of Helen so he would be eye level with her.

“You said my father told you to keep the letter until I turned forty-two,” he said. “That’s next month.”

Helen nodded faintly.

“Why that date?”

Her hands tightened over the jacket. “Because he believed by then you would be old enough to survive hating him.”

Grant went still.

“What am I supposed to hate him for?”

Helen looked toward the open doorway, as if she could still sense Vanessa waiting out there like a storm that hadn’t passed. “He built this house on secrets,” she said. “And he made me help him carry one longer than I should have.”

Grant lowered his voice. “Is the baby me?”

Helen’s face crumpled.

She opened her mouth.

Then Vanessa’s heels clicked across the marble. She stopped at the doorway and said, with vicious satisfaction, “Before she starts crying her way into sainthood, maybe ask why she and your father shared a last name.”

Grant turned toward her.

Vanessa went on. “Or why she spent years in the staff wing while everyone pretended that was normal.”

Maya snapped, “You don’t know anything.”

“I know enough,” Vanessa said. “I know old men don’t hide pictures like that unless the maid means more than she admits.”

Grant rose to his feet. “Did you read the letter?”

Vanessa lifted her chin. “No.”

“Did you destroy it?”

“No.”

“Then where is it?”

For the first time, her confidence flickered. “I don’t know.”

Grant stared at her for a long second, then looked back at Helen.

“Is there another copy?”

Helen wiped her face with shaking fingers. “No. But there is something else.”

“What?”

“A second envelope,” she said. “Locked in the chapel safe. Your father told me if the first letter was ever lost, the second one would lead you to the truth another way.”

Vanessa’s face changed almost imperceptibly.

Grant saw it.

And he realized she had not only known about the box.