Chapter 6: Emily’s Blood
Emily stopped breathing.
“No.”
Margaret stepped in front of her daughter.
Evelyn lowered the pistol.
“I’m not saying Emily is Rachel’s child.”
The tension broke only slightly.
“Then why are you looking at her?” Nathan demanded.
“Because Rachel believed the second child was raised inside the Hayes family.”
Margaret turned slowly toward Charles.
“What does that mean?”
Charles closed his eyes.
Thomas and Margaret’s daughter Emily had been four years old when Nathan disappeared.
She had not been born at the same hospital.
Her identity was not in question.
But another child had entered their family soon after the kidnapping.
Margaret remembered.
Her niece, Sophie Whitman.
Charles’s daughter.
Sophie had been adopted as an infant and raised alongside Emily.
She was now twenty-one.
She had attended the wedding.
And she had disappeared from the chapel at the same time Laura fled.
Detective Brooks immediately issued an alert.
Police found Sophie’s abandoned car near the train station.
On the passenger seat lay an envelope addressed to Nathan.
Inside was a letter.
Nathan,
I knew before the wedding.
Not everything. Just enough to be afraid.
My father told me the truth would destroy all of us. He made me promise to keep quiet.
I’m sorry.
Nathan crushed the letter in his fist.
“She knew?”
Charles shook his head.
“She knew she was connected to the hospital. She didn’t know about you.”
Margaret stepped toward him.
“Is Sophie Rachel’s daughter?”
Charles looked at Evelyn.
Then at the floor.
“Yes.”
Evelyn’s face twisted with grief.
Charles confessed that Rachel had discovered his arrangement with the nurse.
When Evelyn switched the babies, Rachel threatened to expose them.
Charles convinced Rachel to let him raise her daughter as his own, promising he would protect the child.
Six months later, Rachel died in a car crash.
“Accident?” Brooks asked.
Charles did not answer.
That silence was enough.
Evelyn raised the gun.
Before she could fire, Sophie appeared in the boathouse doorway.
Her face was wet with tears.
“Dad?”
Charles stared at her.
“Sophie, run.”
She stepped inside.
“You killed my mother?”
Charles whispered, “I was trying to protect you.”
Sophie looked at the gun in Evelyn’s hand.
Then she looked at the woman she had never known was her grandmother.
“I want the truth.”
May you like
Evelyn replied quietly.
“Then ask him why your mother’s brakes failed.”
