Chapter 6
Clara stared at the photograph like it had reached out and grabbed her.
“That’s the house,” she whispered.
Robert looked at her.
“What house?”
She swallowed.
“The one Mom said burned down before I was born.”
Lydia arrived thirty minutes later.
She studied the photo, then the back.
“Clara, do you know why your name is here?”
Clara shook her head.
“No.”
But she was lying.
Not to us.
To herself.
Robert sat beside her.
“Sweetheart?”
Clara’s eyes filled.
“I found papers once. When I was sixteen. Adoption papers.”
Robert stopped breathing.
“What?”
“Mom said they were old charity documents. She screamed at me for touching them.”
Robert’s face collapsed.
“You think you’re adopted?”
“I don’t know.”
The silence that followed was heavy.
Then Lydia said, “We can find out.”
Robert nodded.
“Do it.”
Meanwhile, Daniel called me again.
I almost ignored it.
Then Lydia said, “Answer on speaker.”
I did.
His voice was raw.
“Emily, Mom is asking for bail money.”
“No.”
“I know.”
That surprised me.
He continued, “She said if I don’t help, she’ll tell Dad the truth about Clara.”
Clara gasped.
Robert stood.
“What truth?”
Daniel went silent.
Lydia leaned forward.
“Daniel, you need to come here now.”
He arrived twenty minutes later with bloodshot eyes and a locked metal box.
“Mom made me keep this,” he said.
Robert took it.
Inside were birth records.
DNA reports.
And a letter from Dr. Price.
Clara was not Robert’s biological daughter.
Her mother was a woman named Rosa Miller.
May you like
Her father was Martin.
Robert whispered, “Evelyn stole a child.”
