Page 11 of The Inheritance At Bourton

Rowan’s hand went to her back, gently rubbing up and down.

“He was watching me,” she said in disbelief. “I thought it stopped when I was little.”

“Keep digging,” Rowan said.

She realized then that she’d stopped and was staring at the box.

There were more clippings and more photographs. She picked them up one by one. One showed her at about twenty, wearing the denim jacket she had for years, crossing a parking lot with groceries. Another showed her on a street she didn't recognize. The pictures were always taken from across a road or parking lot, where no one would notice.

The dates stretched over years. From kindergarten through her twenties, envelope after envelope, the stack of papers grew deeper in the box than she could bring herself to look.

“Cute,” Rowan quipped at the picture of her with no front teeth.

He had had someone watch her.

“He stalked me,” she said. “My whole life was recorded by someone I never even saw.”

Her father had hired people, more than once, to track her down and keep tabs on her. “He knew where I lived. What schools I went to. The whole time.” Leah held up a photo of her and her mother. “I was fourteen. We got evicted and spent six weeks in a motel with just a hot plate. Some charity paid for us to stay. When we had to leave, we ended up in a new town.”

Rowan nodded but said nothing.

What was there to say?

He had found her. He had known where she was. He had just never come.

She remembered all the nights she lay awake as a kid, believing her father was dead because that’s what she'd been told. It was always just the two of them. She thought about how it would have only taken one letter, one money order, or one knock on the door of one of those run-down apartments.

“I don’t know who I’m angrier with,” she said. “Him or her. It’s so unfair. Why? Why would they do this? And then she died, and he still never came forward.” Leah flicked one of the reports with an address she lived at five years ago. “There’s no excuse.”

Rowan reached out, his hand on her back again. He didn't speak. There was nothing in the world he could have said in that moment that would have made it hurt less.

Chapter Five

Rowan pulled out an envelope and handed it to her.

She expected another report. More photos.

But that wasn’t what she found.

“What is this?” she asked.

A photocopy of a money order. Five hundred dollars, made out to her mother. Across the bottom: Returned unopened.

She turned to the next report. Another money order, also returned unopened. The next one was the same. She placed them on the carpet as she went. Her father had sent money across the ocean again and again, but every single one had come back.

“He sent money,” she said. Her voice sounded strange in her ears. Thin.

“Looks like.”

“She sent it back.” She held up one of the copies. “Five hundred dollars would have been rent, Rowan. That was groceries. Clothes. She sent it all back.”

He didn’t offer a defense. She was grateful for that.

“The church ladies who paid for the motel,” Leah said, thinking back. “Two women from some Catholic charity. They came to the motel and gave Mom money. I thought it was a miracle. I literally thought God had sent cash.” She stared at the typed words until they blurred. “It was him. It was him the whole time. He must have figured out she wasn’t going to accept his money.”

“He could be persistent.”

“She let me think—” She pressed the heels of her hands against her eyes. “Why?”