Chapter 3 - THE WOMAN IN THE BLUE DRESS
“Don't let her leave,” Rebecca whispered.
Nathan turned immediately.
The woman beneath the staircase was in her late sixties, with carefully styled silver hair and a dark blue silk dress.
She had been one of the quietest guests at dinner.
I'd seen her speaking with Isabella near the terrace earlier that evening.
Now she was moving toward the front doors.
“Nathan,” I said, “she's leaving.”
He raised one hand.
His security chief understood.
Two guards approached the entrance, not blocking the woman's path aggressively, but making it clear that Nathan wanted a word.
She stopped.
Then she smiled.
“Nathan. Is something wrong?”
He studied her.
“Mrs. Bennett.”
Her smile widened.
“Your father always called me Catherine.”
Rebecca stepped behind him.
Catherine Bennett's eyes shifted toward her.
For just a second, the smile vanished.
Then it returned.
“How extraordinary,” she said softly.
Nathan didn't move.
“You know my sister?”
Catherine's expression became careful.
“I wasn't aware you had another sister.”
Rebecca's hands curled into fists.
“You told me my family would hurt me.”
Catherine looked genuinely taken aback.
“I'm sorry?”
“You came to Margaret's house when I was sixteen. You told me if I ever tried to find my family, something terrible would happen.”
Catherine glanced toward Isabella, who was standing farther down the hall with a security guard.
“Isabella, perhaps you should explain.”
Nathan's voice hardened.
“Don't ask her. I'm asking you.”
Catherine lowered her eyes.
“Your father was a complicated man.”
“That isn't an answer.”
“No,” she agreed. “It isn't.”
Then she looked directly at Rebecca.
“I did visit you. And I warned you not to come here.”
Rebecca stepped forward.
“Why?”
“Because I believed your life depended on it.”
Dorothy gripped my arm.
I could feel her trembling.
Nathan noticed.
“Dorothy?”
She was staring at Catherine.
“I remember you.”
Catherine's face tightened.
“You should. I attended several Caruso family functions.”
“No,” Dorothy whispered. “You came to the hospital.”
The air seemed to disappear from the room.
Catherine didn't deny it.
Nathan asked, “What happened at the hospital?”
Dorothy took a slow breath.
“Your mother was very ill after Rebecca's birth. Your father was frightened. He had been receiving threats for weeks.”
Nathan frowned.
“Threats from whom?”
“He never told me.”
Catherine folded her hands.
“Your father had enemies. That isn't exactly a revelation.”
Dorothy ignored her.
“One night, Evelyn Price brought me a document authorizing Rebecca's transfer to private care. I refused to sign the nursing release.”
Nathan looked toward the discharge form still resting in his hand.
“Why?”
“Because the receiving facility wasn't named.”
Rebecca's voice was barely audible.
“Where was I supposed to go?”
Dorothy looked at her with tears in her eyes.
“I don't know, sweetheart. I swear I don't.”
Catherine sighed.
“Perhaps we should discuss ancient hospital procedures somewhere more comfortable.”
Nathan's expression didn't change.
“We're comfortable here.”
He turned to the security chief.
“Marco, please make sure Mrs. Bennett gets a ride home when we're finished. Nobody is being detained.”
Catherine gave a thin smile.
“A wise distinction.”
That was when I understood something important.
She wasn't frightened of Nathan's guards.
She was frightened of questions she couldn't control.
Rebecca stepped closer.
“Who are you?”
Catherine looked at her.
“Someone who knew your father before you were born.”
“Did you know my mother?”
A pause.
“Yes.”
“Did she know I was alive?”
Catherine didn't answer.
And that silence hurt Rebecca more than anything else.
Nathan reached for his sister's hand.
“We'll find out.”
But Catherine suddenly said something that made him stop.
“Your mother signed the authorization.”
Dorothy shook her head.
“No. She was unconscious.”
“She recovered enough to sign later.”
“That's impossible,” Dorothy said.
Nathan turned.
“Why?”
“Because your mother wasn't told Rebecca had survived until three weeks after the birth.”
Isabella made a small sound from across the hall.
Rebecca looked between them.
“So my mother thought I was dead?”
Dorothy nodded painfully.
“For a little while.”
“And then?”
Nobody answered.
Rebecca pulled Nathan's coat tighter around herself.
“Did she ever ask for me?”
Dorothy began crying.
“Every day.”
That broke something in Rebecca.
She leaned against the wall.
For twenty-nine years, she'd been told she was unwanted.
Now she was hearing that her mother had grieved for a living daughter.
I went to her.
“Would you like to sit down?”
She shook her head.
“If I sit down, I don't think I'll get back up.”
Nathan looked toward Catherine.
“You've told enough half-truths for one evening.”
Catherine's voice sharpened.
“Then perhaps ask your sister what she was doing when your mother tried to bring Rebecca home.”
Everyone turned toward Isabella.
She looked exhausted.
“I was sixteen.”
Nathan stared.
“You knew?”
“I knew Rebecca was alive.”
“And you kept that from me?”
“I was trying to keep her safe.”
“From whom?”
Isabella's eyes moved toward Catherine.
The older woman smiled faintly.
“Careful, dear.”
Nathan heard it.
So did I.
For the first time, Isabella's cruelty at dinner looked different to me.
Not excusable.
But frightened.
She hadn't merely wanted Dorothy away from the table.
She'd wanted Dorothy silent before someone else heard what she knew.
Nathan asked Catherine to remain available to speak with investigators, and Marco escorted her out.
She left without another protest.
But before she stepped through the door, she turned toward me.
“You're Grace Miller, aren't you?”
My stomach tightened.
“Yes.”
“Your mother lives in a small house in Quincy.”
I stopped breathing.
Nathan moved beside me.
“Why are you discussing my employee's mother?”
Catherine's smile disappeared.
“Because families have a way of becoming involved in matters they don't understand.”
She walked out.
I stood frozen.
My mother's caregiver was home with her that night.
I'd spoken to her after dinner preparations.
Had Catherine actually been watching her?
Nathan saw my fear.
“Grace, give Marco your mother's address. He'll have someone check on her.”
I almost refused.
But then I thought of my mother's trembling hands, her medication schedule, and the fact that she sometimes forgot to lock the back door.
I gave him the address.
Nathan looked at Marco.
“Quietly. No frightening her.”
When we returned to the sitting room, Dorothy was seated beside Rebecca.
They were looking at the silver locket.
Nathan opened it again.
“This photograph,” he said. “Dorothy, are you certain the woman holding Rebecca isn't our mother?”
Dorothy shook her head.
“Your mother was still recovering when this was taken.”
“Then who is she?”
Dorothy looked uncertain.
“I've seen her before, but I can't place her.”
Rebecca touched the photograph.
“Isabella showed me pictures of this house. Never the people. Just the house.”
Nathan examined the locket more closely.
Something had caught his attention.
He held it beneath a lamp.
The inside of the silver backing was scratched.
At first, the marks looked accidental.
Then I realized they formed tiny letters.
Nathan read them aloud.
“E.P. Thirty-one.”
Dorothy covered her mouth.
“Evelyn Price.”
“What's thirty-one?” Rebecca asked.
Dorothy looked toward the portrait of Nathan's father.
“Room thirty-one was the hospital records archive.”
Nathan took out his phone, then stopped.
He looked at me.
“Grace, have you ever seen this engraving?”
I leaned closer.
Below the letters was a small symbol.
A rose inside a circle.
I'd seen it that afternoon.
Not at the hospital.
Not in the mansion.
On the leather bracelet around Rebecca's wrist.
“Rebecca,” I whispered, “may I see your bracelet?”
She hesitated, then extended her arm.
Nathan turned the clasp over.
There was the same rose.
And beneath it, one line of numbers.
Dorothy recognized them immediately.
“That's not a room number.”
“What is it?” Nathan asked.
Dorothy looked at Rebecca.
“It's a patient identification code.”
Rebecca swallowed.
“Mine?”
Dorothy shook her head slowly.
“No, sweetheart.”
She pointed to the final two digits.
“That code belonged to a baby boy born the same night you were.”
Nathan stared at the bracelet.
May you like
Then Isabella whispered from the doorway:
“Rebecca wasn't the only child taken from that hospital.”
