Chapter 9 - My Mother’s Missing Years|
I called my mother immediately.
She answered on the second ring.
“Claire, sweetheart. Is everything all right?”
“Did you receive human remains from a crematorium?”
Silence.
Then a quiet sigh.
“I was hoping you'd never have to ask me that.”
My knees weakened.
“Mom, what have you done?”
“Not over the phone.”
“Someone is trying to kill my husband. A pregnant woman is carrying his child. Someone stole my medical records, and now your name is connected to a body that may not belong to the man we think is dead.”
“I know.”
Those two words frightened me more than any threat.
I drove to her house with Detective Ruiz and Marcus. My mother was waiting in the living room, wearing the same blue cardigan she had worn when I was a teenager.
She looked at the detective, then at Marcus.
“Everyone needs to leave except my daughter.”
Ruiz objected, but I raised a hand.
“Give us ten minutes.”
When the door closed, my mother took a small box from a cabinet.
Inside were letters, old photographs, and a medical file bearing the name Victor Hale.
“Twenty years ago,” she said, “your father treated a man who had been badly injured in a car accident. The man was brought in under a false name. He had a head injury, broken ribs, and no identification.”
“What does that have to do with Ethan?”
“Your father realized the patient was connected to the Blackwood family. He was afraid the man would be killed if his identity became known.”
My father had died when I was twenty. He had been a physician, a quiet man who never spoke about the people he treated outside the hospital.
“Did he help this man disappear?”
My mother nodded.
“He helped him recover. Then he gave him a new identity.”
“Victor Hale?”
“Yes.”
I stared at the file.
“Why would you keep this secret?”
“Because the man came back years later and told me someone inside the Blackwood family was trying to destroy Ethan. He asked me to protect a sealed container if anything happened to him.”
“Did you know Ethan was involved with Vanessa?”
“No.”
“Did you know about the fertility records?”
“No, Claire.”
Her eyes filled with tears.
“I knew your husband was dangerous. I didn't know he was cruel to you. If I had, I would have told you to leave.”
The words hurt because they were true.
She opened the box and removed a small key.
“Victor left this with me. He said it would open a private archive.”
“Where?”
“The old Blackwood estate.”
Before I could ask another question, a car horn sounded outside.
Detective Ruiz rushed to the window.
A black sedan had stopped at the curb.
Someone inside raised a phone and photographed the house.
Then the car sped away.
May you like
My mother whispered a name.
“Richard knows we have the key.”
