Safe Harbour Page 0,101

you do. All you have to do is reach out and claim it, as you claimed me. As you reached out nearly a year ago now. This baby would never have happened if it wasn't meant to be, if you didn't want us as badly as I do.

“We have six months to figure it out, to make the right moves, until the baby comes. Six months to end the old life, and start a new one. I can't think of anything more important, or better, or that I want more. You have my faith in you, my loyalty, my love for you, my admiration and respect for all that you are, and have been to me.

“The future is ours. Our baby is coming. Our life will begin soon, just as his will, or hers, although I feel sure it is a boy, just like you. God is offering us a new life, a fresh start, the life we have always wanted, between two people who understand and respect each other, two people who are in fact one now in this child.

“I love you with all my heart, and I promise you that if you come to me, when you come to me, because I believe you will, you will be happy as you've never been. The future, my darling, is ours. As I am yours, with all my love. A.”

The date on it was a week before his death, and Ophélie felt as though she were going to have a heart attack, and she fell to her knees as she read, and reread it yet again. She couldn't believe what she was reading, and she couldn't imagine who it could be. It was unthinkable. This couldn't have happened. It was a lie. A cruel trick someone had played on them. She wondered if it was a blackmail letter, as the coat slipped off her shoulders and fell to the floor as she held the letter in her trembling hand.

She clung to the wall to help herself up, and stared blindly ahead, still holding the letter. And then as she knew, as she thought of it, as it came to her, she wanted to die. The baby spoken of in the letter had been born, if it had been, six months after he died. William Theodore. She hadn't dared name him Ted, but she had come close enough. And it was not the honor she had claimed it was for her dead friend. The baby had been named for his father. Ted's middle name was William. All she had done was reverse the names. The baby was his, not from a sperm bank. And the letter could only be Andrea's. The single signed letter “A” was her initial, and she had even manipulated him about Chad, played into his desperate need for denial, and criticized her. The letter had been written by the woman who had claimed for eighteen years to be her best friend. It was beyond belief, beyond thinking, beyond bearing. Andrea had betrayed her. And so had he. All it could mean was that when he died, he hadn't loved her. He had been in love with Andrea, and had fathered her baby. Ophélie was still holding the letter when she went into the bathroom and got violently ill. She was standing over the sink, looking deathly pale when Pip found her. And she could see that her mother was shaking violently.

“Mom, are you okay?” Pip looked panicked. “What's wrong?” Her mother looked frighteningly ill, and so pale she looked green.

“Nothing,” she croaked, rinsing her mouth out. All she had thrown up was bile and a little bit of turkey. She had eaten almost nothing. But she felt as though she had retched up all her insides along with her heart and her soul and her marriage.

“Do you want to lie down?” Pip offered. It had been a horrible day for all of them, and now she was desperately worried about her mother. She looked like she was going to die, and wished she would.

“I will in a minute. I'll be fine.” Even she knew it was a lie. She would never be fine again. And what if he had left her? What if he had done that and not died? And taken Chad with him. It would have killed her, and maybe Chad, if they both had denial. But he was dead anyway. They both were. It no longer mattered. And now he had killed her, as