Chapter 3 - The Photograph With Two Daughters
“The necklace wasn't my mother's,” Sebastian said.
Grant watched him open the small compartment beneath the garage office desk.
Inside lay a wooden box he'd kept since college.
Sebastian lifted the lid.
There were three objects.
A photograph of Margaret Vale.
A railroad ticket dated December 18, twenty-two years earlier.
And a silver heart-shaped pendant.
He hadn't touched the necklace in years.
Now he turned it over.
The letter E was engraved into the back.
Beneath it, almost invisible, were two smaller letters.
P.C.
“Patricia Carter,” Grant said.
Sebastian nodded.
“My mother told me this belonged to someone who needed protecting.”
“Who?”
“She wouldn't say.”
Sebastian remembered that final evening.
Margaret had entered his bedroom carrying the necklace.
He was twenty-two and home from college for Christmas.
His parents had been arguing for days.
His mother looked exhausted.
She placed the pendant in his palm.
“If anything happens to me,” she'd said, “don't give this to your father.”
He had laughed nervously.
“Mom, what are you talking about?”
She'd touched his face.
“Promise me.”
He had promised.
The next morning, the lake house burned.
Sebastian closed his fist around the pendant.
For years he'd believed his mother had feared his father's temper.
Now he wondered whether she'd been afraid of something far worse.
Grant opened another folder.
“We pulled property records from before the fire.”
“Anything?”
“Your father bought the house in 1987. Patricia Carter was listed as a household employee from 1989 through 2004.”
Sebastian frowned.
“She worked for us?”
“Apparently.”
“I don't remember her.”
“She was listed under her maiden name. Patricia Hayes.”
Sebastian looked up.
That name he remembered.
Patty Hayes.
The quiet woman who brought fresh towels to the guest rooms and sometimes made him grilled cheese after school.
He hadn't seen her since he was a teenager.
“She had a daughter,” Sebastian said.
Grant nodded.
“Emily.”
“And another one.”
“We haven't found a record yet.”
Sebastian looked toward the garage entrance.
“Bring Emily here.”
Ten minutes later, Emily arrived, wrapped in a gray coat.
She looked exhausted.
Sebastian placed the necklace on the desk.
“Have you ever seen this?”
Emily reached toward it.
Then stopped.
“My mother had one like that.”
Sebastian waited.
“She said it belonged to her sister.”
“What sister?”
“Aunt Margaret.”
Sebastian didn't move.
Emily saw his expression.
“What?”
“My mother's name was Margaret.”
For several seconds, neither spoke.
Emily stared at the pendant.
“Your mother was Patricia's sister?”
“I don't know.”
But Sebastian remembered his mother speaking about a sister she had lost contact with.
He'd always assumed they had argued over money.
Emily touched the necklace.
“My mother told me Aunt Margaret was brave. She said she'd given up everything to help us.”
“Help you how?”
Emily shook her head.
“She wouldn't explain.”
Sebastian opened an old family album.
Margaret Vale smiled from a photograph taken shortly before her wedding.
Emily leaned forward.
A quiet gasp escaped her lips.
“I've seen her.”
“Where?”
“In my mother's bedroom. There was a picture of them together when they were young.”
Grant immediately called a records researcher.
Within half an hour, they had confirmation.
Margaret Hayes and Patricia Hayes were sisters.
Margaret married Charles Vale.
Patricia married Daniel Carter, a maintenance worker who died in an industrial accident when Emily was six.
Emily looked at Sebastian.
“Then we're family.”
Sebastian's voice softened.
“Cousins.”
For years he'd believed himself the last surviving member of his mother's family.
Now a frightened woman sitting across from him was connected to the only person who had ever made him feel completely safe.
He pushed the necklace toward Emily.
“I think my mother wanted you to have this.”
Emily picked it up carefully.
A tear slipped down her cheek.
“My mother used to tell me that the people who loved me hadn't forgotten me.”
Sebastian looked away.
He wondered how many times he'd walked past Emily in his own mansion without knowing she was his cousin.
How many evenings he'd heard her polite greeting and barely answered.
How easily he'd accepted a world where she served his dinner while his fiancée treated her like she was disposable.
He felt ashamed.
“Emily, I'm sorry.”
She looked up.
“For what?”
“For not paying attention sooner.”
Before she could answer, Grant's phone rang.
His expression changed as he listened.
Then he said, “Send it.”
He placed a scanned newspaper article on the desk.
It had been published twenty-two years earlier.
LOCAL CHILD REPORTED MISSING AFTER LAKE HOUSE FIRE
The article named six-year-old Anna Carter.
Emily stared at it.
“No.”
Grant continued reading.
Police believed Anna had been inside the property shortly before the fire.
No remains were recovered.
The case was closed after an anonymous witness reported seeing the child leave with an unidentified adult.
Emily covered her mouth.
“I remember Anna.”
Sebastian leaned closer.
“What do you remember?”
Emily squeezed her eyes shut.
“A little girl with dark hair. She was always following me.”
Her breathing quickened.
“We used to play with a wooden boat.”
Sebastian said nothing.
Emily looked at the old photograph.
“She was my sister.”
“Yes,” he answered quietly.
“Why did my mother tell me I was an only child?”
Sebastian couldn't answer.
Grant pointed at the railroad ticket.
“Boss, that ticket might matter.”
It was issued for a train from Detroit to Chicago.
December 18.
The day before the fire.
Two adult tickets and one child fare had been purchased, then canceled.
The purchaser was Margaret Vale.
“Your mother planned to leave,” Grant said.
“With Patricia and one child?” Sebastian asked.
“Maybe.”
Emily shook her head.
“There were two girls.”
Sebastian studied the date.
Then he remembered something.
On the evening before the fire, his mother had been furious with Charles.
He'd heard her say, “You don't get to decide which child deserves a life.”
At the time, he'd thought they were discussing a charity disagreement.
Now the words chilled him.
Grant received a message from his researcher.
“Boss, we found a birth certificate for Anna.”
Emily waited.
“Anna Carter. Born June 14, 1998.”
“Emily was born in 1994,” Sebastian said.
“That makes them four years apart.”
Grant nodded.
“But there was something unusual about Anna's record.”
“What?”
“The birth certificate was amended three months after the fire.”
Emily's eyes widened.
“Amended?”
“Her original surname was Carter. The revised certificate uses a different name.”
Sebastian leaned forward.
“Which name?”
Grant turned his phone toward them.
The revised record showed that Anna had been placed under a sealed guardianship.
Her new identity was listed as:
ANNA STERLING.
Emily's face went white.
“Sterling?”
Grant scrolled farther.
“Boss, there's a photograph attached to a school enrollment record from 2007.”
The image showed a smiling nine-year-old girl standing beside a younger Madeline Sterling.
Both wore matching blue coats.
Sebastian stared at the screen.
Madeline had told him she was an only child.
But in the photograph, her arm was wrapped around another girl.
Beneath the picture was a handwritten caption.
MADELINE AND HER SISTER, ANNA.
Emily reached for the edge of the desk.
“Madeline knows her?”
Sebastian looked toward the engagement ring still sitting in his library upstairs.
He remembered Madeline's expression when the brass key fell from Emily's apron.
He remembered how quickly she'd accused Emily.
And now he understood that she hadn't simply recognized a key.
She'd recognized a name.
“Grant,” Sebastian said, “find Anna Sterling.”
Grant hesitated.
“Boss, there's a problem.”
“What problem?”
He turned the next page.
Anna Sterling had disappeared from public records fourteen years earlier.
But her name appeared on the current security payroll for the lake house.
Sebastian stared.
“She's alive?”
Grant nodded.
“And according to the employment paperwork, she's not listed as a patient.”
“Then what is she?”
May you like
Grant swallowed.
“She's listed as the person in charge of keeping Patricia Carter inside.”
