Chapter 6 - CLAIRE’S MOTHER KNEW ANNA
Claire laughed.
Not because anything was funny.
Because sometimes the mind rejected impossible information by producing the wrong sound.
“My mother’s name was never Pike.”
Victor watched her carefully.
“Did you ever see her birth certificate?”
Claire frowned.
“No.”
“Did she ever talk about her childhood?”
“She grew up outside Baltimore.”
“Where?”
Claire opened her mouth.
Stopped.
Her mother had always said “outside Baltimore.”
Never a town.
Never a school.
Never a childhood friend.
Claire felt suddenly cold.
“My mother died eight years ago.”
Victor’s expression softened.
“I’m sorry.”
“Don’t.”
Claire backed away.
“You don’t get to tell me my dead mother had another name and then say you’re sorry.”
Dominic stepped between them—not threatening Victor this time.
Protecting Claire from being forced into answers too quickly.
“What exactly do you know?”
Victor nodded toward Anna’s note.
“Teresa Pike was Raymond’s younger sister.”
Evelyn stared at him.
“Pike had a sister?”
“Yes.”
“What happened to her?”
“She disappeared from his life when she was twenty-three.”
Claire’s voice was barely audible.
“My mother had me when she was twenty-three.”
The room fell silent.
One mystery answered.
Two more opened.
Why had Teresa fled her brother?
And why had Anna believed Claire could help?
Dominic asked Claire, “Did your mother ever mention the Russo family?”
“No.”
“Anna?”
“No.”
“Raymond?”
Claire closed her eyes.
Then a memory surfaced.
Not a name.
An object.
“My mother had a rosary.”
Victor looked at the beads from Pike’s coat.
“Like this?”
Claire picked it up.
Her hands trembled.
“One bead was cracked.”
She turned it over.
The fourth wooden bead above the crucifix had a hairline split.
Claire stopped breathing.
“This was hers.”
Evelyn whispered, “How did Pike have it?”
Claire remembered the day her mother died.
Cancer had reduced Teresa Bennett from a stubborn, energetic woman to eighty-nine pounds.
There had been one visitor Claire did not know.
A gray-haired doctor who stayed less than ten minutes.
Claire had been twenty-three and exhausted.
She never asked his name.
“He came to the hospice.”
“Who?” Dominic asked.
“Pike.”
Claire sank onto Lily’s desk chair.
“I didn’t recognize him tonight because I barely saw him that day.”
Victor looked uneasy.
“Did he speak to Teresa alone?”
“Yes.”
“For how long?”
“Maybe five minutes.”
“What happened after?”
Claire pressed her fingers against her forehead.
“My mother was upset.”
“Did she say why?”
“She gave me something.”
Everyone waited.
Claire looked up.
“A coat.”
Dominic frowned.
“A coat?”
“My mother’s old green winter coat. She told me never to donate it.”
Claire had kept it because grief made people obey strange requests.
It remained in a cedar chest at her apartment.
She had not worn it once.
“What was special about it?” Dominic asked.
“I don’t know.”
Victor whispered, “Anna used coats.”
Claire looked at him.
“What?”
“To hide things in hems and linings.”
Like the scrap from Anna’s blue coat Lily had found.
Dominic immediately reached for his phone.
“Marcus, send two people to Claire’s apartment.”
Claire stood sharply.
“No.”
Dominic stopped.
“That’s my home.”
“You’re right.”
His answer surprised her.
“I’ll send no one without you.”
For a man used to commanding rooms, the correction mattered.
“We go together,” Claire said.
Dominic nodded.
Evelyn stepped forward.
“I’m coming.”
Claire looked at her.
“No.”
Evelyn flinched.
Claire did not soften it.
“You planted stolen jewelry on me. You tried to get me thrown out of my job and away from a child who trusted me.”
“I know.”
“No, I don’t think you do.”
Evelyn’s eyes filled.
Claire continued.
“You were frightened. Pike manipulated you. I understand that now.”
Evelyn swallowed.
“But?”
“But fear explains cruelty. It doesn’t erase it.”
Evelyn lowered her head.
“You’re right.”
That was not forgiveness.
But it was the first honest thing between them.
Dominic left Evelyn at the mansion under Marcus’s supervision.
Claire, Dominic, Victor and Lily drove to Claire’s apartment because Lily refused to stay behind.
The city streets were slick with rain.
In the back seat, Lily leaned against Claire.
“Was your mommy nice?”
Claire looked down.
“Yes.”
“All the time?”
Claire smiled sadly.
“No. Nobody’s nice all the time.”
Lily considered that.
“Good.”
“Why good?”
“Then I can still love Miss Evelyn if she did bad things.”
Claire’s throat tightened.
Children could reduce adult morality to something both simpler and harder.
“You can love someone and still need them to make things right.”
Lily nodded.
“I think Daddy does that a lot.”
Dominic heard from the front seat.
He said nothing.
At Claire’s apartment, the cedar chest sat in her bedroom closet.
The green coat smelled faintly of mothballs and old perfume.
Claire ran her fingers over the lining.
Nothing.
Dominic checked the pockets.
Victor examined the hem.
Lily sat cross-legged on the bed.
“Grandma sewed that?”
“Yes,” Claire said.
“How do you know?”
“She repaired everything herself.”
Lily pointed.
“That part is crooked.”
Claire looked.
One interior seam near the collar had been sewn with green thread slightly darker than the original.
She opened it carefully.
Inside was a small envelope.
Her name was written across it.
CLAIRE.
She sat down.
The handwriting belonged to her mother.
Claire unfolded the letter.
My darling girl,
If you ever find this, Raymond has probably found you too.
Claire stopped.
Dominic knelt near her.
“You don’t have to read it aloud.”
She shook her head.
“I need to.”
She continued.
Raymond is my brother.
Do not hate me for hiding that.
When we were young, he believed damaged memories could be repaired by controlling what a frightened child heard repeatedly. Later, powerful men began paying him to make inconvenient children doubt what they had witnessed.
Evelyn Hart was one of them.
Victor closed his eyes.
Claire kept reading.
Anna Russo discovered what he had done. She tried to expose him.
I helped her.
If Anna is gone, look for the train photograph, not the ticket.
The ticket lies.
The photograph tells you where she went.
Claire lowered the letter.
Dominic frowned.
“What train photograph?”
Victor shook his head.
“I don’t know.”
Lily spoke from the bed.
“The one in Daddy’s box?”
Everyone turned.
“What box?” Dominic asked.
“Grandpa’s watch box.”
Dominic stared at her.
“How do you know about that?”
“Mommy showed me.”
The room went completely still.
“When?” Dominic asked.
Lily looked confused.
“When I was little.”
“How little?”
She held up five fingers.
Anna had supposedly died when Lily was seven.
Possible.
But Dominic knew no watch box.
Lily continued.
“It has a train picture inside.”
Dominic looked at Claire’s letter again.
Not the ticket.
The photograph.
Then Claire noticed another object inside the coat seam.
A baggage claim tag.
Old.
Faded.
BALTIMORE PENN STATION.
Locker 214.
Victor whispered, “Anna went back.”
Dominic stood.
“When?”
Claire turned over the tag.
A date had been handwritten on the back.
Six months earlier.
The same week the unknown woman had entered Lily’s bedroom.
Dominic’s phone vibrated.
Marcus.
Dominic answered.
His expression changed immediately.
“What happened?”
He listened.
Then looked at Lily.
Claire knew before he spoke that something was wrong.
“Evelyn found Pike.”
Victor stood.
“Where?”
Dominic lowered the phone slowly.
“She didn’t find him.”
May you like
His eyes went cold.
“He found her.”
