Chapter 8
Mom refused to speak until we reached Samuel’s office.
Then she asked him to lock the door.
Melissa paced beside the conference table.
I stood opposite Mom.
“Is she alive?”
Mom pressed both palms against the polished wood.
“I don’t know.”
“That is not an answer.”
“It is the only answer I have.”
Samuel looked confused.
“You told me the baby died.”
“That’s what Thomas told everyone.”
“But you knew otherwise?”
Mom began to shake.
“I woke after surgery. A nurse brought me a baby and said she was mine. Hours later, Thomas told me there had been a mistake. He said my daughter had died and the baby I held was one of Sarah’s twins.”
“Me,” I whispered.
“Yes.”
“What made you believe my sister survived?”
“I saw the bracelet. It said Baby Girl Hale. When I asked for it after the funeral, the hospital said it had disappeared.”
“The bracelet that appeared in your house,” Melissa said.
Mom nodded.
“Years later, Calvin sent me a photograph of a little girl. She looked like Thomas, but he claimed she was mine. He demanded money.”
“Did you pay him?”
“For sixteen years.”
I stared at her.
“You paid Ryan’s father?”
“I thought he knew where my daughter was.”
“Did he?”
“I never learned the truth. The payments stopped when Calvin died.”
Samuel looked troubled.
“How did he die?”
“Suicide,” Mom said.
Ryan had told me his father died in a construction accident.
Another carefully placed lie.
I thought of the two female passports in the storage unit.
“Could one belong to the missing daughter?”
Samuel called the detectives.
The passport photographs were sent for facial comparison.
One woman was identified within an hour.
Dr. Natalie Brooks.
The therapist who testified against me.
The passport used the name Anna Hale.
My mother stared at the photograph.
“How old is she?”
“Thirty-six,” Samuel said.
Naomi contacted the court immediately.
Dr. Brooks had presented herself as an independent professional while hiding a direct connection to Ryan.
The judge suspended Ryan’s visitation until a full hearing.
May you like
For the first time in two days, I felt able to breathe.
Then the board of Hale Industries called an emergency meeting.
