Camille stood a few steps farther back.
Warren came closer.
“Eleanor, why did you tell me you never wanted to see me again?”
She frowned.
“I never said that. You’re the one who wrote me that you wanted nothing to do with us.”
“I never got your letter. And I never sent you any such message.”
Then Camille began to cry.
“Warren… there’s something you need to know.”
Marguerite whirled around.
“Camille, be quiet!”
But the young woman shook her head.
“Your mother hid the letter, it’s true. But the message Eleanor got that night…”
She looked at the child, then at her husband.
“I wrote it. From your tablet. And your father found out what we did before he died.”
PART 3
Warren stepped back slowly.
For several seconds he couldn’t look at his wife.
Then he watched little Thomas, who was playing happily with a button on Eleanor’s blouse.
The child didn’t understand that the lives of the adults around him had just collapsed.
“Did you know I had a son?” Warren asked Camille.
She nodded through tears.
“Your mother told me Eleanor was pregnant. I thought if you knew, you’d go back to her.”
“And you decided to keep me from knowing my own child?”
Camille lowered her eyes.
“I was afraid of losing you.”
Warren let out a bitter laugh.
“Well, you’ve just accomplished exactly that.”
Marguerite tried to step in.
“Son, Camille only wanted to protect your marriage.”
Warren turned to her.
“Protect it from what, Mother? From a baby who hadn’t even been born yet?”
Marguerite opened her mouth but found no answer.
Nancy, Eleanor’s mother, who had watched the conversation from a few steps away, came over to her daughter.
“Let’s go, sweetheart. Thomas needs to eat.”
Marguerite recognized her at once.
She was the seamstress she had looked down on for years.
“Mrs. Hayes, wait. I need to meet my grandson.”
Nancy studied her with a calm that was more uncomfortable than any reproach.
“He’s been in this world fifteen months, Mrs. Prescott. He hasn’t missed out on anything because his mother is poor. He’s missed out because you decided my daughter didn’t deserve to be part of your family.”
Marguerite lowered her eyes.
For the first time, nobody rushed to defend her.
Eleanor shifted the little boy onto her hip.
“Warren, our son isn’t to blame for anything. But today I won’t let him witness another fight.”
He nodded.
“I just want to know why my father knew him and I didn’t.”
That question opened a wound Eleanor had spent far too long trying to close.
It had all begun when she discovered her pregnancy, shortly after the divorce.
She had been working on the restoration of an old mansion on South Battery when she started feeling sick.
A coworker insisted on taking her to the clinic.
The news came at a terrible moment.
Warren had just publicly announced his engagement to Camille.
Eleanor went home with an ultrasound in her purse and spent that night sitting in the kitchen, staring at a photograph of a tiny life she didn’t know yet.
She had suffered too much during her marriage.
But that baby wasn’t responsible for the decisions of his parents.
When she finally gathered the courage, she wrote to Warren.
She explained that she was pregnant, that she didn’t want to get back together, and that they needed to talk to decide how they would handle their responsibilities.
When her calls went unanswered, she sent a formal notice to the family offices by certified mail.
She kept the delivery receipt.
On May 7, someone signed for it.
It was Marguerite.
That same night, a reply arrived from the tablet Warren usually used to communicate when he was working.
The message was devastating.
“Don’t look for me again. You’ve already gotten too much from this family. Solve your problems and let me live in peace.”
Eleanor read those words so many times she learned them by heart.
She never called again.
For months, she convinced herself that her ex-husband knew about the pregnancy and had chosen to walk away.
But fate had Thomas Prescott turn up one afternoon at her small apartment in North Charleston.
He had come to bring her some boxes of books she had left behind in the old marital home.
When she opened the door, she was almost six months pregnant.
Thomas looked at her belly.
Then he looked into her eyes.
“Eleanor… is that baby Warren’s?”
She began to cry.
She couldn’t answer.
But she didn’t need to.
Thomas came in, set the boxes on the floor, and sat down beside her.
He listened to the whole story.
He saw the copy of the notice and read the message she had received.
For several minutes, he sat perfectly still.
“My son has made many mistakes,” he said at last. “But I find it hard to believe he wrote this.”
Eleanor assured him she knew exactly which device it had come from.
Thomas asked her, when she was ready, to let him clear things up.
“That child deserves to know who his father is. And Warren will have to answer for him, whether he likes it or not.”
Eleanor didn’t refuse forever.
But she was exhausted.
She asked for time to get through the pregnancy without being trapped again between Marguerite and Warren.
Thomas respected that request, though he never stopped insisting that it had to be resolved.
From then on, he visited her every week.
He went with her to buy a secondhand crib.
He learned to assemble a stroller after studying the instructions for almost two hours.
He even argued good-naturedly with Nancy about which of them made better crab cakes.
When Eleanor learned she was expecting a boy, she asked whether it would bother him if he carried his name.
Thomas took off his glasses.
“You want to name him after me?”
“I want him to have the name of a good man.”
That man, accustomed to running business meetings without ever raising his voice, wept in her arms.
On the day of the birth, he was at the hospital at MUSC.
He waited beside Nancy until a nurse came out to announce that everything had gone well.
When he held the baby in his arms, he whispered:
“Welcome, little one. Your grandfather took a lifetime to find you.”
From that day on, Thomas was a constant presence.
He spent Tuesdays at Eleanor’s home.
He brought fruit, diapers, and little gifts he always tried to pass off as necessary purchases.
