Chapter 5
Diane’s arrest made national news.
Every channel, every website, every gossip show was talking about it. The public hated her. The comments on the news articles were brutal: “Lock her up and throw away the key.” “How do you hit an eight-year-old?” “She deserves everything she gets.”
I didn’t feel any satisfaction.
I just felt tired.
Three days later, Margaret woke up.
The doctors said it was a miracle. She’d had bleeding on the brain, a broken arm, three cracked ribs, but she was awake, and she was talking, and she remembered everything.
Robert was by her side the second she opened her eyes.
“Maggie,” he whispered, squeezing her hand. “Thank God. I thought I’d lost you.”
Margaret pulled her hand away.
“Don’t touch me,” she said, her voice hoarse but clear.
Robert flinched like he’d been hit.
“Maggie, please. Let me explain—”
“I don’t want to hear it,” she said. “I heard Diane screaming in the hospital hallway three days ago. I heard everything. About Eleanor. About Clara. About the letters you never got because Diane intercepted them. About Ethan paying her medical bills for three years. I know it all.”
She looked at him, her eyes filled with tears.
“Thirty-two years,” she said. “Thirty-two years we’ve been married. I thought we had a perfect life. I thought we were honest with each other. But you had a whole other family before me, and you never even mentioned her name. Not once.”
“I thought she was dead,” Robert said desperately. “Diane told me Eleanor and the baby died in a car crash. I grieved them, Maggie. For years. I never would have kept this from you if I’d known the truth. You have to believe me.”
“Believe you?” Margaret said, letting out a bitter laugh. “I don’t know what to believe anymore. The man I married isn’t the man I thought he was. My daughter’s husband isn’t the man I thought he was. My whole life has been a lie.”
She turned her head away from him.
“I want a divorce,” she said quietly.
Robert went pale.
“No,” he said. “Maggie, no. Please. We can fix this. We can go to counseling. We can work through it. I love you. You’re the only woman I’ve ever loved. Eleanor was a mistake. A stupid, terrible mistake I made when I was young and scared. But you? You’re my life. Please don’t do this.”
Margaret didn’t answer. She closed her eyes.
“Get out, Robert,” she said. “I don’t want to see you right now.”
He stood there for a long time, like he was waiting for her to change her mind. When she didn’t, he turned and walked slowly out of the room. He passed me in the doorway, his face ashen, his eyes red.
I went in and sat beside my mom’s bed.
“Are you okay?” I asked softly.
She opened her eyes. Tears were running down her temples into her hair.
“No,” she said. “I’m not okay. My heart is broken, Ava. Into a million pieces. I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to look at your father again without seeing her. Eleanor. The woman he loved before me. The woman he had a daughter with. What if he only married me because he thought she was dead? What if I was just a consolation prize?”
“That’s not true,” I said, taking her hand. “Dad loves you. More than anything. You can see it in his face when he looks at you. He’s destroyed right now because he’s scared he’s lost you.”
“Love isn’t enough,” Margaret said. “Not when there’s this much hurt. Not when there are this many secrets.”
She squeezed my hand.
“What about you and Ethan?” she asked. “What are you going to do?”
I didn’t answer right away.
Ethan and I had barely spoken since the day he’d turned Diane in. We were staying in the same penthouse, but we were sleeping in separate bedrooms. Every time I looked at him, I saw the lie. Three years. He’d known about Clara for three years and he’d never told me. The man I’d promised to spend my life with had kept the biggest secret I’d ever heard from me.
“I don’t know,” I said honestly. “I love him. But I don’t know if I can trust him anymore. Trust is everything, right? Once it’s broken… it’s so hard to put back together.”
Margaret nodded.
“I know exactly how you feel,” she said.
Down the hall, a nurse called my name.
I stood up.
“I’ll be right back,” I said. “Do you need anything?”
“Just some water,” she said. “And… don’t tell your father I said any of that about the divorce. Not yet. Let me tell him myself when I’m ready.”
I nodded and walked out of the room.
The nurse was standing by the nurses’ station, holding a thick manila envelope.
“This was dropped off for you,” she said. “No name. No return address. Just your name on the front.”
I took the envelope. It was heavy.
I went into the empty waiting room at the end of the hall and opened it.
Inside were dozens of old letters. Tied together with a faded blue ribbon.
I recognized Eleanor’s handwriting instantly from the photo.
They were the letters she’d sent to Robert over the years. The ones Diane had intercepted. The ones Ethan had told us about.
But there was something else.
Tucked in the back of the envelope was a birth certificate.
Dated twenty-four years ago.
For a baby girl named Olivia Voss.
Mother: Eleanor Voss.
Father: Robert Hale.
My blood ran cold.
Clara wasn’t Robert’s only daughter with Eleanor.
May you like
He had two.
And Olivia was still out there somewhere.
