Chapter 2 - The Letter in the Drawer
Robert missed the board meeting.
For the first time in fifteen years, he missed something that involved Chapter & Brew without calling ahead, issuing instructions, or sending Madison to manage the damage.
He simply stood in the terminal until Scarlet’s flight disappeared from the departure screen.
Madison found him near the windows.
“The board is asking where you are,” she said carefully.
Robert looked at the runway.
“Tell them to proceed without me.”
Madison blinked.
“Robert, the expansion vote—”
“Proceed without me.”
She had worked for him long enough to recognize when not to ask questions.
Back at his Manhattan apartment, Robert ignored twelve calls from directors and walked directly to the storage room.
Scarlet had left most of her things behind.
At least, he had assumed she had.
After the divorce, he had told the staff to pack everything into labeled boxes and place them in storage. He had never opened them. There had been no reason to. Scarlet had wanted the divorce. Scarlet had taken her books, clothes, photographs, and left him with an empty apartment that had somehow still felt like her.
He found the boxes beneath a stack of old event banners.
SCARLET HALE — PERSONAL.
Robert opened the first box.
Books.
A scarf.
A framed photograph of Scarlet and her mother.
Then a small wooden desk organizer.
Inside the bottom drawer was a white envelope.
His name was written across the front.
Robert Callahan.
The handwriting was Scarlet’s.
The postmark was dated twenty-one months earlier.
His hands began to shake.
He tore it open.
Robert,
I do not know whether you will read this yourself.
Maybe Madison will screen it. Maybe your lawyer will advise you not to respond. Maybe you will see my name and decide that whatever I have to say can wait until your next flight, next meeting, next deal.
But I am writing because there is something you deserve to know.
I am pregnant.
The baby is yours.
I found out two weeks after I left.
I waited to tell you because I needed to know whether I wanted you in my life because you loved me or because I was afraid to do this alone.
I am still afraid.
But I am learning that fear is not a reason to return to someone who stopped choosing you.
If you want to be a father, call me yourself. Not your assistant. Not your lawyer. You.
If I do not hear from you, I will understand.
Scarlet
Robert read it twice.
Then a third time.
At the bottom of the envelope was a faint stamp from the mailroom of Chapter & Brew headquarters.
Received.
His stomach dropped.
He called Madison.
“Did you see this letter?”
She arrived at his apartment twenty minutes later.
When he showed it to her, her face changed.
“I remember it,” she whispered.
Robert looked up sharply.
“What?”
“It came to the executive mailroom. Your father’s office was still handling some of your personal correspondence then.”
“My father?”
Madison nodded slowly.
“He said it was private. He took it.”
Robert’s father, Charles Callahan, had died six months earlier.
Robert remembered the day Scarlet’s letter had arrived.
He had been in London negotiating a European expansion deal. His father had called him twice, angry about Scarlet leaving. He had told Robert that marriage required discipline and that women who walked away needed to learn consequences.
Robert had listened.
He had not asked questions.
Now he understood.
Charles had received Scarlet’s letter.
May you like
Charles had hidden it.
And Robert had been too absent from his own life to notice.
