The sealed envelope settled into my palm, and the sight of Dad’s handwriting across the front made my stomach tighten.
Grant.
Just my name, written by Raymond Mercer himself before doctors took him into emergency surgery. I stood in that hospital corridor staring at it, afraid of what might be inside and even more afraid of why my father had made one thing so clear before he was sedated: Natalie was not supposed to see it.
Three days earlier, none of this had made sense. Dad had been standing in the middle of my kitchen asking me for a thousand dollars. That alone was enough to tell me something was wrong.
My father was the kind of man who would spend an hour repairing something most people would replace before he would admit he needed help. For more than thirty years he had worked construction. He carried lumber, poured concrete before sunrise on freezing mornings, climbed roofs under brutal summer heat, and came home with hands that always seemed to have another scrape or callus on them. He never talked much about sacrifice. He just made sacrifices. When I went to college, he sold his motorcycle to help cover my tuition, and I only learned about it later, from an uncle who mentioned it at a holiday dinner like it was common knowledge. When I was nine and needed decent shoes for school, he sold the only good suit he owned, and he never told me that either. Other people did. That was Dad. He would quietly give away something he cared about and then act like it had never mattered at all.
So when he showed up at my house with his weathered hands clasped together and his eyes fixed on my kitchen floor, I knew this was not some casual request for spending money. He looked embarrassed before he had even finished asking.
What happened next changed everything… FULL STORY on the next page.
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