On the morning of his wedding, my ex-husband sent our seven-year-old son a broken toy car.
Then he sent me a message that hurt far more than the gift ever could.
“He’s nothing to me today.”
I stared at those words on my phone while my son, Eli, stood nearby in his dinosaur pajamas, smiling with the kind of innocent excitement only a child can have.
He believed his father had remembered him.
He had no idea what his father really thought.
And neither of us knew that the battered little toy sitting in his hands was about to reveal a secret his grandfather had hidden for years.
A secret that would change Eli’s future.
The package arrived before breakfast.
Eli heard the knock and ran toward the front door in his socks.
For months, he had talked about his father’s upcoming wedding.
Mark was marrying Vanessa that afternoon at an expensive garden venue two towns away. From the pictures online, it looked like the kind of wedding filled with white chairs, elaborate flower arrangements, strings of warm lights, and champagne-colored decorations.
