For a long moment, I stared at that picture and finally saw what Nina had seen. So many people had always told Taylor and me that they couldn’t tell us apart, but now I saw that it was a simple matter of looking into our eyes. “You’re right. How did you see that?”
Nina stroked her palm over my cheek. “How could I not? It’s impossible to miss. You look like your mother, at least in your eyes. The rest of your face may look much more like your father’s side, but those eyes are all her.”
Propping the portrait up against the back wall of the trunk, she looked for another picture while I kept my gaze on the four of us. I didn’t remember the day we sat for that picture, but the fact that my father even appeared in it was noteworthy. Only formal portraits included him. Any other time a picture might be taken, he was absent, at work or on a business trip that was likely anything but.
“I have a confession to make, though. I didn’t notice how much like your mother you were until now. The first time I saw this picture, I thought you looked like your father.”
“I did,” I admitted, knowing Nina had every right to hate that in me after what my father had done. I didn’t like that truth any more than she likely did, but it was the truth. Taylor and I both looked more like Stones than my mother’s family.
“It’s expected that you’d look like your parents, Tristan. It’s okay.”
Happy to avoid the comparison between the man who had her father murdered and myself, I reached inside the trunk to lift out a stack of photographs I recognized as pictures from when I played sports as a child. Each one showed me smiling and happy, a winner every time.
“You looked so cute with all your trophies. It’s hard to imagine this guy who wears a suit all the time playing anything.”
“Then I’ll have to take these pictures when we leave so I can remind you from time to time,” I joked. “Right now, we need to look through the rest of this trunk.”
Nina picked up a pile of letters wrapped in a red ribbon. Holding them up to show me, she read the name on the top envelope. “Tressa. Were these your mother’s? I’m guessing from your father. At least you’re like him in that.”
I shook my head, unable to believe my father had ever written my mother anything. He couldn’t even be bothered to call her on most days, so the thought of him writing love letters seemed unlikely. “My father wasn’t the type of man to write anything down, unless it made him money.”
Handing them to me, she smiled. “Well, just in case, I don’t feel right looking through them. It’s more appropriate you do it. But why are they here?”
“I took a lot of their things after the crash. Rogers must have brought them here.” I looked down at the letters sitting in my palm and wondered if they’d been from an old boyfriend before my mother and father married. The idea of my mother happily in love with someone made me happy. All those years with my father had been so filled with misery for her. The neglect. The rumors of infidelity. The coldness he seemed to enjoy showing only her. That she might have been in love with someone who cared enough for her to write his feelings down so she could forever look back and remember their time together gave me hope that at some point she’d truly been happy.
I unwrapped the bow and slid the first envelope from the top of the pile. Turning it over, I slipped my finger under the flap and easily opened it to find a single sheet of paper inside. Unfolding it, I scanned the page and found the words of a lover. Had it been my father, after all? Maybe before they’d married he’d been the kind of man she deserved.
I hated having to leave you last night, Tressa. I know it’s not forever, but it’s away from you all the same. Write me and let me know when we can see each other again.
The letter was unsigned and gave no indication who the author was. Turning it over, I saw nothing on the back to solve the mystery of who had written it.
“Who’s it from?” Nina asked as she leaned over to take a glance.
“I don’t know. There’s no signature.”
“Try another one. They’re probably all from the same person.”
Placing the letter back in its envelope, I opened another one and read words similar to the first. Whoever the letter writer was, he’d met my mother and missed her when she was gone. I read two more letters that sounded almost identical to the first ones and wondered if any of them in this stack would be signed.
“Do they have a date on them?” Nina asked as she took the last one I’d read from my grasp.
I opened up another and searched first for a date. None was written anywhere on the paper. Shaking my head, I shrugged. “Looks like another mystery for us.”