Chapter 3
Vanessa reached the front staircase before Richard caught her.
He grabbed her arm.
She fought him with both hands.
“Let go of me!”
“Give Grace the necklace.”
“It belongs to this family.”
“So does Grace.”
The words stopped everyone.
Richard seemed startled that he had said them.
So was I.
Vanessa stared at him with hatred.
Then she opened her hand.
The pendant was gone.
“What did you do with it?” I demanded.
She smiled.
“Prove I ever had it.”
Victor struck his cane against the floor.
“Search her.”
Vanessa turned toward him.
“You have no right.”
“This is my house.”
Samuel answered quietly.
“Perhaps not anymore.”
Victor looked at him.
Pain crossed the old man’s face.
“Not now, Samuel.”
“This should have been addressed twenty-four years ago.”
Richard checked Vanessa’s pockets.
She shoved him away.
“You will not humiliate me in front of the staff.”
“You humiliated yourself when you attacked Grace.”
One of Victor’s nurses pointed toward the staircase.
“There.”
The pendant rested on the carpet two steps below Vanessa.
She must have dropped it during the struggle.
I picked it up and held it tightly.
Vanessa watched me as if she wished she had thrown it into the fire too.
Victor came closer.
His eyes moved across my face.
Then he reached toward my damaged hair.
I stepped away.
He lowered his hand.
“You have her eyes,” he said.
“You told my mother to leave.”
His mouth tightened.
“Who told you that?”
“Samuel.”
Victor looked at the groundskeeper.
Samuel did not apologize.
“It was time.”
Victor asked everyone to enter the library.
I almost refused.
Every instinct told me to walk out of the mansion and never return.
But I had spent seventeen years believing my mother had died without leaving me anything except a necklace.
Now I had a photograph, a name, and a room full of people who knew more about her than I did.
I entered the library.
Vanessa tried to follow.
Victor stopped her.
“Not you.”
“I am Richard’s wife.”
“And Grace is Eleanor’s daughter.”
“You don’t know that.”
“No,” Victor said. “But I intend to find out.”
Vanessa looked at Richard.
He would not meet her eyes.
She walked away, but I heard her heels stop just beyond the doors.
She was listening.
Victor sat behind the desk.
Richard remained standing.
Samuel placed the damaged trust papers in front of Victor.
The old man touched Eleanor’s name.
“I believed these had been destroyed.”
“Why?” Richard asked.
“Because your mother told me she burned them.”
Richard’s face went still.
“My mother knew?”
Victor closed his eyes.
My mother, Eleanor, had been twenty-two when she became pregnant.
She refused to identify the father.
Victor believed the man was a married employee at one of the family companies.
He demanded that she end the pregnancy or leave Boston.
She left.
Three months later, she returned to the mansion one night and begged her mother for help.
Richard’s mother, Margaret, turned her away.
Victor claimed he was traveling and did not learn about the visit until years later.
“You expect me to believe that?” I asked.
“No,” he said. “I barely believe myself anymore.”
“Did you search for her?”
“For a time.”
“How long?”
He looked down.
“Six months.”
I laughed, but there was no humor in it.
“Six months? She was your daughter.”
“I was angry.”
“You were ashamed.”
“Yes.”
The honesty surprised me.
It did not comfort me.
Richard paced beside the bookshelves.
“Mother told us Eleanor ran away with stolen money.”
“She lied.”
“You let her.”
“I let many lies live in this house.”
Victor explained that Eleanor had contacted him again when I was four.
She asked for money but refused to reveal our address.
Victor sent it through an attorney.
The attorney later reported that Eleanor had died.
“What attorney?” I asked.
“Charles Wynn.”
Samuel turned sharply.
“Margaret’s attorney?”
Victor nodded.
Samuel struck the desk with his palm.
“You trusted him?”
“He had served the family for decades.”
“He served your wife.”
Victor’s breathing became strained.
A nurse moved closer, but he waved her away.
Richard asked, “Where is Charles Wynn now?”
“Dead. He suffered a heart attack nine years ago.”
“And Mother?”
“Dead seven years.”
The people who might have known what happened to my mother were gone.
Or so it seemed.
Samuel placed the photograph in front of me.
“Eleanor wrote to me once after she left.”
Victor stared at him.
“You never told me.”
“She made me promise.”
“What did the letter say?” I asked.
Samuel hesitated.
“She said someone in the family had threatened to take her baby.”
My stomach turned.
“Who?”
“She didn’t give a name.”
“Do you still have the letter?”
Samuel nodded.
“It’s hidden in my cottage.”
Victor ordered one of the nurses to call a private laboratory.
He wanted a DNA test that night.
I said no.
Everyone looked at me.
“I am not handing over my blood until someone tells me why Vanessa knew about those documents.”
Richard glanced at the doors.
Vanessa’s shadow vanished from beneath them.
Victor frowned.
“What do you mean?”
“She stole the folder before you arrived. She knew what it contained.”
Richard added, “She also tried to burn it.”
Victor’s expression hardened.
“Bring her in.”
Samuel opened the doors.
Vanessa was gone.
We searched the first floor.
Her car was still outside.
Her coat and purse were in the foyer.
Richard went upstairs.
A moment later, he called my name.
I found him in his bedroom standing before an open wall safe.
Cash, jewelry, and passports had been removed.
On the floor lay an envelope addressed to Vanessa.
Richard picked it up.
The return address belonged to a law office in Boston.
The date was four months earlier.
He opened it.
Inside was a photocopy of Eleanor’s trust.
There was also a note.
Mrs. Caldwell,
As requested, this confirms that any verified biological child of Eleanor Caldwell may claim her controlling interest in the Caldwell estate. Destruction of the original trust would not invalidate the registered copy held by the county.
Richard read it aloud.
My skin went cold.
Vanessa had known before she cut my hair.
“She didn’t attack me because you complimented me,” I said.
Richard looked sick.
“She attacked you because she recognized the necklace.”
A door slammed at the end of the hallway.
We ran toward the sound.
Vanessa stood inside my small room.
My suitcase was open on the bed.
My clothes had been thrown across the floor.
She held a yellowed envelope above a candle.
Samuel shouted, “That’s Eleanor’s letter!”
Vanessa lowered it toward the flame.
I lunged forward.
She stepped back and held the candle against the paper.
“Come closer and your mother’s last words disappear.”
Richard froze.
“Vanessa, put it down.”
“You all think I’m stupid.”
“No one said that.”
“You didn’t need to. For fifteen years, I sat at this family’s table while Victor treated me like an outsider. I hosted his charities. I smiled at his friends. I saved Richard from every scandal.”
“What scandal?” I asked.
Vanessa looked at her husband.
Richard’s face drained of color.
“Don’t,” he warned.
She smiled.
“You didn’t tell your new niece?”
“Tell me what?”
Vanessa kept the flame near the envelope.
“Richard was the last person seen with Eleanor before she disappeared.”
The room went silent.
I looked at him.
He shook his head.
“I was seventeen.”
“What happened?”
“I gave her my car.”
Vanessa laughed.
“That isn’t all.”
Richard moved toward her.
She pushed the letter closer to the candle.
“Stop!”
He stopped.
She looked at me.
“Your beloved uncle helped Eleanor escape. Then he lied about where she went. Three days later, her car was found beside the harbor.”
“It was my car,” Richard said. “And there was no body.”
Vanessa’s eyes glittered.
“But there was blood.”
I could barely breathe.
“Whose blood?”
“No one knows,” she replied. “The records vanished.”
Samuel looked at Richard.
“You told me she took a bus.”
“She asked me to say that.”
Vanessa turned the candle.
The corner of the envelope caught fire.
I grabbed a glass of water from the bedside table and threw it.
The flame died.
Vanessa screamed and dropped both the candle and the letter.
Richard seized the envelope.
I picked up the candle before it could ignite the carpet.
Samuel took the wet letter carefully.
The ink had blurred, but one line remained clear.
If anything happens to me, do not trust Margaret.
Vanessa rushed toward the door.
Victor stood there.
He had heard everything.
His face collapsed.
“My wife did this,” he whispered.
Vanessa shoved past him.
Victor nearly fell.
I caught his arm.
He looked into my eyes.
“I failed your mother.”
Before I could answer, an engine roared outside.
Vanessa had taken the medical van.
Richard ran to the window.
“She’s getting away.”
Samuel studied the damaged letter.
“No,” he said. “She’s going somewhere.”
“How do you know?”
He pointed to a handwritten number beneath my mother’s warning.
It was not a telephone number.
It was a patient identification number.
May you like
And beside it were three words.
St. Catherine’s Home.
