He rubbed the back of his neck, fingers dragging across the collar of his coat.
“She’s been trying to reach me. She came to my office, but I wasn’t in, so she wrote me a letter. She told me all about Mason and about how Celia walked away from him the day he was born. About how she’d raised him herself for five years. And about her heart condition…”
I said nothing. I didn’t need to — this was Matthew’s moment.
“When she went to Celia on Thanksgiving, she threw my card at her. That’s how this entire thing unfolded. Elsie said Celia flew into a rage and told her she never wanted a kid.”
“She lost her wallet that day,” I murmured, piecing it all together. “She said something about her business card in her cardigan pocket.”
“I think meeting you kept her going. She told me someone had shown them kindness. And that her heart broke when Mason said he was hungry and she couldn’t do anything about it.”
I sat back slowly, the air thick around us.
“I drove to the address she left. She answered the door like she wasn’t sure I was real. And then… she let me meet him. We did a rapid DNA test that same day. It came back two days later.”
Matthew looked at me, softer now.
“He’s mine.”
I felt Andrew shift beside me, his arm now behind my back.
“I’ve missed five years,” Matthew said quietly. “Five years that I’ll never get back, but thanks to you, I found him.”
He reached into his pocket and pulled out a folder and a sealed envelope.
“I didn’t know how to thank you,” he said. “So I drove here after Elsie gave me your address. I wanted to repay you in any way I could. But while I waited for you to get here… Andrew and I got talking.”
He looked over at Andrew and gave a small, respectful nod.
“He told me about Noelle and Nina. And about how hard you’ve both worked to give them a good life — and I realized… I can do something meaningful.”
He placed the envelope on the table.
Continued on the next page
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