He stared at the screen for a long moment, his jaw tightening.

“I’ve known for three days,” he said quietly.

I looked up at him then, searching his face.

“You’re adopted?” I asked.

He nodded slowly, his eyes dark with a pain I hadn’t seen in him before.

“Eleanor isn’t my biological mother,” he said.

He leaned against the damp stone wall of the mudroom, looking suddenly exhausted.

“She adopted me when I was three days old,” he said. “It was a closed adoption through a private agency in Hartford.”

“But the name on the certificate,” I said, my throat dry. “Eleanor Carter.”

“Carter was her maiden name,” Nathan said, looking at me. “Before she married my father.”

The silence in the mudroom stretched between us, thick and heavy.

“She kept it a secret from everyone,” he said. “Even my father’s board of directors.”

“Why?” I asked.

“Because of the estate,” Nathan said, his voice dropping to a whisper. “My grandfather’s will was very specific.”

He rubbed his face with both hands, his shoulders tense.

“The fortune, the house, the shares in the corporation—they only pass to biological heirs,” he said.