Brenda called me the morning after our visit to Evelyn. I was packing Liam's lunch when her name appeared on the screen, and I nearly let the call go to voicemail. I had slept badly, turning over Evelyn's confession and the image of Garrett's watch until dawn began showing through the curtains.
“Did you speak to Mom again?” Brenda asked as soon as I answered.
“Yesterday. We took her the photograph Liam found.”
“Was she all right?”
“She cried. She told us about the watch.”
Brenda released a breath that sounded as though she had been holding it for days. “I thought she might finally tell you. She wouldn't talk to me about it when she left.”
“She said Garrett gave it to her after he left me. She kept it because she thought he might come back and make things right.”
“That sounds like Mom.” There was sadness in Brenda's voice, but no surprise. “She always believed that if she waited long enough, people would become the people they promised to be.”
I looked toward the staircase. Liam was upstairs, searching for his other shoe.
“I don't think waiting helped any of us,” I said.
“No. It didn't.”
Brenda told me she had spent much of the previous evening going through the papers she had collected from her home. She had separated bank statements from old bills, photographs from documents, and letters from the folders Garrett had left behind. At first, she had been looking for evidence of the money he sent Evelyn. Now she was trying to understand why he had been so determined to keep his former life separate from his new one.
“I found a message saved in an old email account,” she said. “It's from Garrett to Mom. I don't think he realized she still had access to it.”
“What does it say?”
“I'm not sure I understand all of it. That's why I want you to see it.”
She offered to meet me during my lunch break. I arranged for a colleague to cover the front desk at the dental office and drove to a small café near Brenda's apartment.
She was already waiting at a table when I arrived. A laptop sat open in front of her, and several papers were spread across the tabletop. She looked as if she hadn't slept either. Her hair was pulled into a loose knot, and there was a faint crease across one cheek from where she had rested her face on her hand.
“I printed the message,” she said, sliding a sheet of paper toward me. “The original is still in the account, but I didn't want to risk losing it.”
I sat down and began reading.
The email was brief. Garrett had written that he appreciated Evelyn's discretion and that he needed her to continue keeping him informed about Liam. He asked whether I had changed jobs, whether we were still living at the same address, and whether there had been any significant changes in our financial circumstances.
Then came the sentence that made me stop.
I can't have Samantha connecting my current circumstances to the old accounts until the remaining issues are resolved.
I read it again.
“What are the old accounts?” I asked.
“That's what I don't know.” Brenda turned the laptop toward me. “I found references to several accounts, but I haven't been able to match them to anything I recognize.”
“Could they be ordinary bank accounts?”
“Possibly. But why would he need to keep them separate from you?”
I looked down at the printed email. Garrett had left me with debts, and I had spent years assuming that those debts were the result of his carelessness or desperation. Now there was evidence that he had been thinking deliberately about money and about what I might discover.
“Did he ever mention these accounts when you were married?”
“No. He handled most of his own finances. I thought that was normal. He said he preferred to keep things organized separately.”
I remembered how often Garrett had told me not to worry about money while refusing to show me the statements. I remembered the envelopes that arrived from lenders and the way he used to insist that the charges were temporary. At the time, I had believed him because we were married and because I thought trust meant accepting that some things were complicated.
I had confused trust with surrendering the right to ask questions.
“Have you spoken to a lawyer?” I asked.
“Not yet. I wanted to know whether there was something here before I started making accusations.”
“That makes sense.”
She folded her hands on the table. “Samantha, I need to tell you something else. Garrett has been telling people that he and I are finished because I became suspicious and couldn't let go of his past. He says I'm bitter and that I want to ruin his future.”
I stared at her.
“His future with Valerie?”
“Yes. He's telling her that the problems with his previous marriage were resolved years ago, that he has no obligations beyond what he chooses to take on, and that I am trying to punish him for leaving.”
A bitter laugh escaped me. “He said almost the same thing about me when we divorced. He told people that I was difficult and that I didn't need him.”
Brenda's eyes filled with tears.
“I think he has a story for every person in his life,” she said. “And each story makes him the reasonable one.”
I looked at the email again. The questions about Liam's school, my employment, and our finances had been written in the same casual tone someone might use to ask about the weather. Garrett had reduced our lives to information he wanted collected and stored.
“Evelyn said she told him how we were doing,” I said. “She believed that if she kept him informed, he might eventually contact Liam.”
“Did she ever tell him about your financial problems?”
“She said she did. She told him we needed help.”
Brenda lowered her eyes.
“Then he knew.”
The words sat between us.
I had spent five years wondering whether Garrett understood the consequences of his departure. I had imagined him distracted by his new life, perhaps ashamed, perhaps too stubborn to admit he had made a mistake. The email suggested that he had not forgotten us at all. He had simply chosen to remain informed without becoming involved.
“Did he ever ask about Liam's schoolwork?” I said. “His friends? Anything that sounded like genuine concern?”
Brenda thought for a moment.
“He asked whether Liam was doing well. He wanted to know if he had health problems. He once asked Mom whether you had moved in with anyone. But I never heard him ask about a school performance or a birthday or anything specific that would have required him to be present.”
I nodded slowly. It was consistent with what Evelyn had told me. Garrett wanted information about Liam, but he had never wanted the responsibility of being Liam's father.
I gathered the papers into a neat stack and handed them back to Brenda.
“Don't throw anything away,” I said. “Not the emails, not the statements, not the letters. Make copies of everything and keep the originals somewhere safe.”
“I will.”
“And please don't confront him alone if you think he might become aggressive or try to destroy records. I don't know whether he would, but I don't want you taking unnecessary risks.”
She looked at me with a mixture of gratitude and surprise.
“Thank you.”
I shook my head. “We're both trying to understand what happened. We don't have to trust each other completely to be careful.”
She accepted that without argument.
Before I left, Brenda showed me another page she had found in the folder. It was a handwritten list of dates, with short notes beside each one. Some corresponded to Liam's school events. Others matched the dates when I had contacted Evelyn for help with the car or asked whether she knew anyone who could recommend inexpensive childcare.
At the bottom of the page was a reference to a meeting with someone named Martin.
“Do you know who Martin is?” I asked.
Brenda shook her head. “I've seen the name on a couple of papers. I don't know whether he's an accountant, a lawyer, or someone from Garrett's work.”
“Could he be connected to the accounts?”
“That's what I'm trying to find out.”
I took a photograph of the page, with Brenda's permission, and saved it alongside the email. The legal aid appointment I had arranged was still several days away, but I now had a more focused set of questions to take with me.
As I drove back to work, I kept thinking about the phrase remaining issues. Garrett had not written that he was worried about Liam or that he wanted to make amends. He had written about preventing me from connecting his current circumstances to old accounts.
Whatever those accounts represented, he had believed that my discovering them would create a problem for him.
And he had paid Evelyn to make sure I remained unaware.
That evening, I sat with Liam at the kitchen table while he worked on a school assignment. He had drawn a diagram of the solar system and was carefully labeling the planets. I watched him check each spelling before moving to the next one.
“Mom?”
“Yes?”
“Are you going to find Dad?”
The pencil in my hand stopped moving.
“Why do you ask?”
“Because you keep talking to people about him.”
I considered telling him that I was trying to resolve some old financial questions. It would have been true, but incomplete.
“I am trying to find out what happened,” I said. “I don't know yet whether that means I'll speak to him.”
“Do you want to?”
I looked at my son. He wasn't asking out of curiosity alone. He wanted to know whether the man who had left him might finally be required to answer for it.
“I want the truth,” I said. “Whether your dad is willing to tell it is another matter.”
Liam nodded and returned to his assignment.
After he went upstairs, I opened the photograph of Garrett's email once more. I enlarged the final lines until the words filled the screen.
The old accounts. The remaining issues. The request for discretion.
For years, I had believed that Garrett's absence was the central mystery. Now I was beginning to understand that his absence might have been only one part of something much larger.
Click here to continue reading: PART 10: The Legal Aid Adviser Found a Problem in My Old Divorce Papers, and Garrett’s Carefully Separated Lives Began to Overlap
Twenty Minutes After I Finally Trusted My Son to Walk Home Alone, My Neighbor Was Waiting With Tears in Her Eyes
Part 9 of 20
