Eternally Yours,
Daniel
I’d found the note tucked into the pages of a journal with a few pressed rose petals and read it out loud. Drew sat opposite of me, as silent as snow, and still as death. Echo’s emotions had been rampaging right from the start when we’d opened up the box and started sifting through its contents. At that moment, as I sat there holding the letter, all I felt from her was the sorrow, shock, and anger that note had brought with its reading almost eighteen years ago.
“He wanted her to get an abortion! He didn’t want me from the start.” My eyes brimmed with tears I was struggling to keep at bay. Drew scooted closer and pulled me into his arms.
I remember the day I read that letter. I must have cried for a day and a half after. Danny had blown up my pager, but I didn’t return his calls. He even drove past the house five or six times. If Daryl had still been home on leave, he wouldn’t have dared, but he knew that Daryl had gone back to California a few days before. Finally, I called him back; he said I had it all wrong.
“How could anyone misunderstand what he was getting at,” I cried, “it was obvious!”
“I don’t know Eden, it’s pretty clear what he meant—I’m so sorry,” Drew soothed as he stroked my hair and I cried into his shoulder.
He thought I was asking him, and rather than correct him, I just let him believe I was. Echo sighed in my mind.
There isn’t, she said with venom, but he was going to try his damnedest to make me believe I’d just misunderstood what he’d written. He insisted that he’d been talking about adoption, but I knew Danny, and I knew he was lying. My fury had been real, and I told him there would be no adoption, and there would most definitely be no abortion. I’d sooner die than give our child up in any way. Eden—he may not have wanted you—in the beginning, but I did.
She must have felt my doubt about him ever wanting me. The feeling of rejection was eating me alive. She hadn’t said he would eventually warm up to the idea of having me, but she’d definitely implied it. Yet, after reading that letter, I was struggling with believing it. Echo sighed again, this time in a way that told me she felt the need to elaborate.
“When we met up after I read that letter, I introduced Danny to something that scared him more than anything he had written about. I told him we were done and that I would raise our baby on my own. I never wanted to see him again! I mean seriously what kind of man is willing to do the deed but not want to deal with the consequences that may come up. I lit him up like a damn Christmas tree. He begged me not to leave him. He was literally reduced to a crying mess and it was then that I knew for sure, he was in love with me. I know that probably doesn’t mean much to you—but Danny never cried—ever!”
“Well, I don’t care how much he was in love with you; the fact still remains that in the beginning, he would have been okay with killing me to save his own reputation, his own ass! What a pompous, selfish asshole.”
“Echo,” Drew asked, looking down at me, and I nodded my head yes. The tears had stopped, but he still held me tight. “We can finish looking through this stuff for now. We can wait—do it later if you’d like. There’s no rush Eden.”
“Well, what about Aiden? Did his leads turn up anything?”
Drew sighed like he dreaded telling me the answer and I got a sinking feeling.
“All the prospects were dead ends. One was here around that time, but he was 15 years too old. One of the others turned out to be already deceased. The other Danny is in prison and it turned out that his background was fabricated as part of his con operation. His real name was Gregor. I’m still trying to figure out how Aiden thought that was even an option.”
“Then no, I don’t want to do this later! I’ve waited too long for answers. I want to get
