Chapter 3
I could not breathe.
The phone shook in my hand so violently that Daniel reached for it before it fell.
He looked at the screen.
His face drained.
My father stood.
“What is it?”
I turned the phone toward him.
He stared at the message.
Ask your father where the baby went.
For one second, no one spoke.
Then Aunt Patricia made a sound like she had been struck.
My eyes moved to her.
“You know what this means.”
She shook her head too fast.
“No.”
“You do.”
My father whispered, “Emily.”
I backed away from him.
“Was there a baby in the car?”
His silence was a blade.
Daniel looked sick.
“My mother was pregnant?”
My father closed his eyes.
“No.”
The answer came too quickly.
I knew what too quickly meant now.
Uncle Robert cursed under his breath.
“Charles, tell her.”
My father opened his eyes.
“She wasn’t Isabel’s baby.”
The floor seemed to move.
I grabbed the arm of a chair.
“Whose baby?”
Aunt Patricia started crying harder.
My father looked at me.
“Your mother’s.”
My whole body went cold.
“No.”
He said nothing.
“No, I was five. Mom wasn’t pregnant.”
“She was,” he said.
My voice rose.
“You lied to me about that too?”
“I didn’t know until after she died.”
Daniel stared at him.
“What happened to the baby?”
My father’s mouth trembled.
“She survived.”
Survived.
The word entered me like light and terror at the same time.
I had a sister.
Somewhere in the world, I had a sister.
My mother had carried another child, and everyone in that room had buried her existence along with my mother.
“Where is she?” I whispered.
Aunt Patricia sobbed.
My father looked at the rug.
“I don’t know.”
I laughed.
I could not help it.
It came out broken and sharp.
“You lost a baby?”
“Emily—”
“You lost my sister?”
“No,” he said, standing again. “She was taken.”
Daniel stepped toward him.
“By whom?”
My father looked toward the windows, where camera flashes sparked beyond the trees.
“Mateo.”
Daniel went still.
“My father took her?”
“He wanted leverage,” my father said. “He wanted the documents Clara had stolen. He believed the baby was mine and Clara’s, and he wanted something to hold over me.”
The room tilted again.
“Was she?”
My father looked at me.
For once, he did not look away.
“Yes.”
My knees buckled.
Daniel caught my arm.
I pulled away because I could not stand needing anyone in that moment.
“My mother was leaving you,” I said.
My father flinched.
“She was angry. Hurt. We had separated privately.”
“You had another child with her while separated?”
“It was complicated.”
“No,” I snapped. “Complicated is what guilty people call damage when they don’t want to name it.”
His face crumpled.
“You’re right.”
That almost made it worse.
I wanted him to defend himself.
I wanted something to fight.
Instead he gave me surrender, and surrender did not bring my mother back.
The housekeeper appeared again.
“Sir, security says the reporters have the accident file.”
My father’s face hardened.
“How?”
She shook her head.
“They’re saying there was a cover-up.”
Daniel looked at me.
“I didn’t send this.”
I believed him.
That scared me too.
Uncle Robert moved toward the desk.
“There’s only one person who would gain from reopening this publicly.”
My father looked at him.
“Mateo is dead.”
Daniel’s head snapped up.
“What?”
My father looked surprised.
“You didn’t know?”
Daniel’s face twisted.
“My grandmother told me he disappeared.”
“He died in prison eight years ago,” my father said.
Daniel stepped back as if the truth had shoved him.
“I spent my whole life afraid he would find me.”
My anger paused.
For the first time that night, I saw the boy beneath Daniel’s suit.
The child in the wreck.
The child who grew up with whispers and missing answers.
My father said quietly, “I’m sorry.”
Daniel looked at him with hatred and grief tangled together.
“Your apology is twenty years late.”
My phone buzzed again.
Another message.
This one had an address.
A small town in Pennsylvania.
Then a name.
Mara Ellis.
My hands went numb.
“Who is Mara Ellis?”
My father froze.
Aunt Patricia whispered, “No.”
Uncle Robert turned away.
I looked at all of them.
Every face answered before anyone spoke.
My voice cracked.
“That’s her, isn’t it?”
My father sank back into the chair.
“I thought she was dead.”
“Don’t say that,” I said. “Don’t you dare say that unless you actually knew.”
He covered his mouth with one hand.
“I looked for years.”
“Quietly?” Daniel asked.
My father did not answer.
Daniel’s anger sharpened.
“You looked quietly because a public search would expose what you had done.”
“I was a judge,” my father said.
“You were a father,” I said.
That silenced him.
A flash of lightning lit the library windows.
For a strange second, my mother’s portrait above the fireplace looked alive.
I turned to Daniel.
“Did your grandmother ever mention a baby?”
He hesitated.
“Once.”
“What did she say?”
“She said the accident took two mothers and stole one child from the world.”
My chest hurt.
I pressed a fist against it.
My father stood.
“Emily, please don’t go there tonight.”
I stared at him.
“You don’t get to tell me where to go anymore.”
“It could be a trap.”
“Everything in my life has been a trap built by silence.”
Daniel said quietly, “I’ll drive.”
My father stepped between us and the door.
“No.”
For a moment, he looked like the father I knew. Protective. Commanding. Certain he could place his body between me and danger.
But I was not five anymore.
“Move,” I said.
His eyes filled.
“If something happens to you too, I will not survive it.”
The sentence hit me hard.
Because beneath all the lies, I heard the truth.
He loved me.
He had loved me badly.
Fearfully.
Selfishly.
But he loved me.
Still, love did not erase what he had hidden.
“Then come with us,” I said.
He blinked.
“What?”
“You want to protect me? Then stop standing in front of the truth. Walk toward it with me.”
Daniel looked at me in surprise.
My father stared at the door.
Then slowly, he nodded.
We left through the back entrance while reporters shouted at the front gate.
In the car, no one spoke for almost an hour.
Rain streaked the windshield.
Daniel drove.
My father sat in the back like a condemned man.
I held my mother’s letter in my lap.
When we crossed into Pennsylvania, my phone buzzed one last time.
A message from the same unknown number.
Don’t bring Charles.
I turned and looked at my father.
May you like
He had seen it too.
And the fear in his eyes told me the night was not done with us.
