The documents in this box explain what I found.
Eleanor has copies and knows how to protect you legally.
Please understand something.
Nothing in this house is a test of whether you deserve love.
You already do.
If anyone tells you that protecting yourself means betraying your family, remember that the person asking you to surrender your dignity may be the person doing the betraying.
Then came the line that broke me.
“I couldn’t save our son from the man he decided to become.”
I stared at those words.
Our son.
Jared.
I read them again and again.
My first instinct was to reject them.
Thomas had been sick.
Exhausted.
Perhaps he misunderstood something.
Perhaps Richard had manipulated Jared.
Perhaps Vanessa had pressured him.
I searched the box with increasingly desperate hands.
The printed emails were dated eight months before Thomas died.
One contained a business proposal sent from Jared’s professional address to Richard Vale.
