Chapter 11 - THREE DAYS AFTER DEATH
For one insane moment, I thought my mother had survived.
Evelyn examined the photograph.
Then she shook her head.
“That isn’t Rebecca.”
I looked closer.
Same hair.
Same build.
Similar face.
But not identical.
Dad recognized her.
“Laura Ellis.”
My mother’s younger sister.
My aunt.
A woman I had been told died before I was born.
Another lie.
Laura had helped Rebecca investigate Charles.
After Rebecca died, Laura disappeared.
The photograph showed Laura meeting someone outside a motel.
Michael.
A seventeen-year-old Michael Whitmore.
When confronted, Michael admitted the truth.
Laura had contacted him after Mom’s death.
Michael was already terrified of his father.
He gave Laura information.
Then she disappeared too.
“Did Charles kill her?”
Michael shook his head.
“I don’t know.”
A search began.
Two days later, Agent Reed found a woman living under another name in Oregon.
Laura was alive.
She flew to Charleston under protection.
When she entered the room, I understood why someone might confuse her with my mother.
She looked like an older version of Rebecca.
Laura hugged me.
Neither of us spoke.
Then she looked at Dad.
“I’m sorry.”
Dad cried.
Laura had spent twenty years collecting evidence.
She had one thing nobody else possessed.
A handwritten confession from the detective who falsified my mother’s accident report.
It named Charles.
It named Daniel.
It named Michael.
The case was finally complete.
Or almost.
Laura looked at me.
“There’s one more thing.”
I was getting tired of those words.
“What?”
“Charles didn’t discover Rebecca’s investigation by accident.”
“Someone told him.”
“Who?”
Laura hesitated.
Then she said:
“Margaret.”
Of course.
Margaret had known everything.
My mother.
The ledger.
My biological father.
Daniel’s plan to marry me.
Everything.
And she had welcomed me into her family with a smile.
The next time I saw Margaret, I didn’t sit.
I placed Laura’s confession against the glass.
“You knew.”
Margaret stared at it.
“You knew what Charles did to my mother.”
Silence.
“You knew who I was.”
Silence.
“You let Daniel marry me.”
Margaret finally spoke.
“I was protecting my family.”
I stared at her.
“No.”
“You were protecting money.”
Her eyes hardened.
“You wouldn’t understand.”
“I understand perfectly.”
I leaned closer.
“You spent your entire life calling cruelty loyalty.”
Then I walked away.
Behind me, Margaret shouted.
“Claire!”
I didn’t turn.
“Daniel has something Laura doesn’t know about!”
I stopped.
May you like
Margaret’s next sentence made me turn around.
“He has Rebecca’s original ledger.”
