Chapter 2 - THE SON HE NEVER KNEW
Four days later, Alistair’s investigator entered his office carrying a sealed folder.
Marcus Reed had spent twenty years handling fraud cases for the Minnesota Attorney General’s Office before joining Crestview. He was not a nervous man, but he remained standing after placing the folder on Alistair’s desk.
“You should read the first two documents yourself.”
The first was a birth certificate.
Sawyer James Fields.
Mother: Nellie Marie Fields.
Father: Not listed.
Date of birth: seven months after Alistair and Nellie’s divorce.
Alistair stared at the middle name. James had been his father’s name.
His hands began to shake.
The second document was a death certificate.
Sawyer Fields had died at age ten from injuries sustained at a construction site in North Minneapolis.
The site had been owned by a Crestview subsidiary.
“No,” Alistair said.
Marcus remained silent.
Alistair read the date again. Five years earlier, while he had been giving a speech in Chicago about Crestview’s expansion, his son had been dying less than six miles from his office.
“How did it happen?”
“A temporary walkway collapsed during an unauthorized weekend shift. Nellie was working there as a cleaner. She brought Sawyer because her sitter canceled.”
Alistair’s throat tightened. “Her leg?”
“She was trapped under a steel support while trying to reach him. Doctors amputated below the knee.”
Alistair pushed back from the desk so violently that his chair struck the wall.
“Why wasn’t I notified?”
Marcus opened the folder to a set of internal emails.
“Because the liability team identified Sawyer as your possible biological son. Someone ordered his records sealed, paid Nellie through a shell company, and threatened to accuse her of trespassing if she contacted the press.”
At the bottom of the authorization page was Katie Carpenter’s signature.
Alistair stared until the letters blurred.
“She knew about him.”
“She knew before he was born.”
Marcus placed a third file on the desk. “Your mother’s former assistant kept copies of private correspondence. She died last year. Her daughter found the files while clearing the house.”
Inside were letters Nellie had written to Alistair.
Alistair, I am eleven weeks pregnant. I need to speak to you before your mother makes decisions for both of us.
Another letter contained a sonogram photograph.
Another begged him to visit after Sawyer was born.
None had ever reached him.
There were also copies of letters supposedly written by Alistair to Nellie.
They were cruel and precise.
Do not use this pregnancy to interfere with my new marriage.
Accept the money and stay away from my family.
If you attempt to establish paternity, my attorneys will prove you are unstable.
Alistair recognized the letterhead but not the words.
“My mother wrote these.”
Marcus nodded. “The signatures were produced from scans.”
That evening, Alistair returned to the encampment without reporters, security guards, or a driver. He wore jeans and an old winter coat. He carried a new pair of crutches but left them outside Nellie’s tarp.
“I know about Sawyer,” he said from several feet away.
The tarp moved, but Nellie did not come out.
“I found the birth certificate.”
Silence.
“And the death certificate.”
Nellie finally emerged. Her face hardened when she saw the folder in his hand.
“You investigated me.”
“I investigated what was done to you.”
“You don’t get to make that distinction.”
She lowered herself onto an overturned milk crate. Alistair stayed standing until she pointed at the ground.
“You always hated being beneath anyone,” she said. “Try it.”
He sat on the cold pavement.
“I never wrote those letters.”
Nellie’s jaw tightened.
“My mother forged them,” he continued. “She intercepted yours. She knew Sawyer existed.”
Nellie looked away toward the river.
“You expect that to comfort me?”
“No.”
“You married another woman while I was throwing up in a rented room above a laundromat. Your mother brought me thirty thousand dollars and told me you’d have Sawyer taken away if I refused it.”
Alistair closed his eyes.
“I didn’t know.”
“You didn’t ask.”
The words landed harder than any accusation.
Nellie touched the tiny shoes around her neck.
“He wore these the day I took him home from the hospital. They were too big. I stuffed the toes with tissue.”
Alistair’s voice broke. “What was he like?”
She looked at him then, and the anger in her face became something deeper.
“He loved trains. He hated peanut butter. He laughed whenever he got nervous. And every Father’s Day, he asked whether you knew his name.”
Alistair covered his mouth.
May you like
Nellie did not reach for him.
“You want to help me?” she said. “Find out why your mother let our son die.”
