Chapter 18 #2
Richard’s hands tightened on the arms of his chair, knuckles going white against the dark leather.
For a long moment, he didn’t respond. The only sounds were the ticking of an antique clock on the mantle and the distant murmur of activity from the ballroom.
Then, very quietly, barely audible: “Yes.”
The single word lingered in the space between us, its weight almost palpable in the stillness.
“We were in love,” Richard continued, his voice breaking on the words. “I loved him more than I’ve ever loved anyone before or since. And he loved me, at least for a while. Until I proved I didn’t deserve it.”
The confirmation settled over me. I’d suspected. But hearing him admit it out loud felt monumental.
“The baby,” I said gently, my hand still resting protectively on my own belly. “Was it yours?”
“Yes.” The word came out as barely more than a whisper, almost lost beneath the clock’s steady ticking. “Thomas and I were together from January through early June. The timing fits perfectly. The baby was mine.”
“Did Thomas tell you about the pregnancy?” Dominic asked quietly, his hand tightening slightly on my shoulder.
“No.” Richard finally looked at me, revealing a face ravaged by grief and something darker—regret that had curdled into self-loathing over five decades. “I found out fifty years too late. Fifty years too late to do anything that mattered, to be anything he needed.”
He was silent for a long moment, lips pressed into a thin line. When he spoke again, his voice was raw, almost violent in its intensity.
“Do you want to know the worst part?” His hands clenched into fists at his sides, trembling.
“If I’d known—if Thomas had told me about the baby—I would have forced his hand.
I would have created such a scandal that he’d have had no choice but to marry me.
I would have told everyone, made it public, trapped him into accepting marriage with me whether he wanted it or not. ”
His laugh was bitter, self-mocking, the sound of a man who’d examined his own character and found it wanting. “I was that selfish. That desperate. That pathetic. I would have taken away his choice entirely, turned our love into a cage. Because I couldn’t stand the thought of losing him.”
The admission hung in the air, ugly and honest.
“But I wanted him to want me,” Richard continued.
The anguish on his face was terrible to witness—raw and consuming.
“I wanted him to choose me, to fight for us, to love me enough to risk everything. So I waited. I thought we had time.” His voice dropped.
“I thought I had time to prove myself, to show him I could be worthy of him, to demonstrate that I was worth the risk. I thought there would be years—decades—to build a life together. I thought…”
He couldn’t finish. The weight of countless “what ifs” crushed whatever words remained.
“Why wouldn’t he have told you about the baby?” I asked gently, trying to keep my voice neutral.
“Because I betrayed him,” Richard replied. “I betrayed his trust.”
“How?” Dominic asked, his voice carefully neutral.
“Thomas discovered the money laundering in late May,” Richard said, his voice hollow.
“He’d been compiling evidence for weeks—following paper trails, matching construction budgets against actual work completed, documenting the shell companies Judge Whitmore and Vicente Antonelli were using to move money through the preservation project.
He found contracts that didn’t make sense, invoices for work that was never completed, payments to companies that didn’t exist.”
Richard’s hands twisted together in his lap. “He came to me first, before going to anyone else. We were lovers. He trusted me. He thought I’d help him expose it, thought I’d be as horrified as he was by the corruption.”
“But you were involved,” I said, understanding dawning.
“Yes.” Richard’s face twisted with shame. “When Thomas showed me the evidence, laid out what he’d discovered, I admitted I was involved. My father too. I’d helped facilitate some of the transactions for him, signed documents I should have questioned, looked the other way when things didn’t add up.”
He shook his head. “I thought honesty would matter to him. That he’d appreciate my truthfulness. That our love would be enough for him to overlook it, to help me hide it, to protect me from the consequences. I thought he’d choose me over his principles.”
“Instead,” I said quietly, “he looked at you like he didn’t know you.”
“Worse.” Richard’s voice broke. “He looked at me like I’d destroyed something precious. Like the man he loved had never existed at all.”
I could imagine Thomas’s devastation too clearly—pregnant with the child of someone who’d been complicit in the very corruption he was trying to expose. The betrayal would have been absolute.
Something shifted in my chest. The parallel and the contrast between Richard and Dominic was painfully clear.
Dominic had wounded me in a similar manner.
He’d planned to use me. But in the end, he chosen me. Immediately, completely, without reservation or hesitation.
“When was this?” I asked, though I suspected I already knew.
“June first, 1973.” Richard’s hands twisted together harder, knuckles white.
“Thomas gave me an ultimatum. Two weeks to tell my father I was ending my involvement, that I’d testify against the operation if necessary, that I’d make things right no matter the cost to our family’s reputation.
He said if I didn’t do it—if I chose my family over the truth, over him, over our future together—he would go to the authorities himself. ”
Richard’s voice dropped so low I had to strain to hear him. “We argued. Terribly. Right there in that greenhouse.”
He gestured toward the windows. “I told him he was naive, that he didn’t understand the forces he was challenging, that exposing this would destroy both of us.
He said I was a coward who cared more about money and status than justice, that he’d been wrong about me, that he couldn’t believe he’d fallen in love with someone so morally bankrupt. We were both right.”
The silence stretched, weighted beneath that final conversation.
“That was the last time you saw him,” Dominic said. Not a question.
“Yes. June first. He left angry, disappointed, probably heartbroken. Walked out of that greenhouse—” Richard’s gaze fixed on the glass structure visible through the window, “—and I never saw him again. His deadline was June fifteenth—two weeks to shut down the operation or he’d go to authorities.”
When he turned to face me again, his eyes were haunted by five decades of wondering. “And then, on June sixteenth, one day after the deadline, I received a letter.”
My breath caught. “A letter?”
Richard stood with visible effort and moved to his desk.
He unlocked the bottom drawer with a small key from his pocket and withdrew a wooden box—expensive, antique, the kind meant for precious documents.
His hands shook as he opened it, revealing a yellowed envelope inside, along with what looked like other mementos—a pressed trillium flower, a couple of faded photographs, scraps of paper with handwritten notes.
“I keep everything here,” he said quietly, his fingers trembling as he lifted the envelope. “I come here sometimes, late at night when everyone’s asleep, and I read it. Torture myself with it.” He held the envelope but didn’t offer it yet. “It was addressed to me, postmarked June fifteenth.”
“You believed it?” I asked carefully.
“Why wouldn’t I?” Richard’s voice turned defensive, but the defense was directed inward, at himself.
“It was Thomas’s handwriting—or so I thought.
It said things only Thomas would know—references to conversations we’d had, private moments we’d shared in that greenhouse, intimate details about our relationship. It made sense.”
His voice cracked. “Thomas was angry with me—hurt and disappointed. He’d given me an ultimatum I couldn’t meet, discovered I wasn’t the man he thought I was.
Of course he’d leave. Of course he’d want to escape all of this, start fresh somewhere I couldn’t find him.
Of course he’d choose his principles over a relationship built on lies. ”
He finally extended the envelope toward me. I took it carefully, noting the postmark—Millcrest, June 15, 1973. Inside was a single sheet of paper, slightly yellowed with age but still crisp, the handwriting precise and measured.
Richard,
By the time you read this, I’ll be gone.
I’ve decided to leave Millcrest. The situation has become impossible, and I can’t stay in a place where everything I believed in has been corrupted beyond recognition.
I’m going to California to start fresh, somewhere I can practice architecture without compromising my principles.
I thought we meant something. You told me I meant something to you that time in the greenhouse when the trilliums were blooming. But I can’t reconcile the man I loved with the man who helped facilitate corruption. I don’t blame you for your choices, but I can’t be part of it.
Please don’t try to find me. I need to build a new life, away from all of this. Away from you.
I hope you find happiness, Richard. You deserve that, even if we couldn’t find it together.
Thomas
The letter was perfect. Too perfect. Every word calculated to make Richard believe Thomas had left voluntarily, that there was no reason to worry or investigate or ask questions.
The reference to their private conversation about trilliums—intimate enough to seem authentic, specific enough to convince.
Someone had to have seen them, overheard them.
The letter had been written to make Richard grieve but not search. To tie up the loose end of their relationship so cleanly that no one would question it… even Richard.
“You kept it all these years,” I said quietly, my fingers gentle on the aged paper.