Chapter 2 - The Woman Who Was Supposed to Be Dead
Vanessa's scream sent two guards racing upstairs.
I wanted to follow, but Anthony caught my arm. “Stay with Sofia.”
“You just asked whether I have a sister. You don't get to tell me to stay quiet.”
His eyes went to the butterfly bracelet. “Your mother protected a child eleven years ago. I believed that child was dead.”
Before he could say more, Vanessa came down the stairs with blood on her palm. “Someone broke into the study.”
Daniel Russo, Anthony's security chief, appeared behind her. “We found a storage device plugged into your computer, sir. Someone copied and erased the footage.”
Vanessa denied touching it. Daniel said her fingerprints were on the device.
Anthony demanded the truth.
“I was protecting you,” she insisted.
“From what?”
“From the past.”
I asked how she knew Margaret Morgan's name. Vanessa's composure broke.
“Because your mother wasn't supposed to have any family left.”
I took Sofia into the sitting room. There, she told me the video included another woman, a baby, and Vanessa demanding the child. The baby's name was Rose.
Rose.
When I was young, my mother had said she would name another daughter Rose if she ever had one.
Then my phone rang. My neighbor Mrs. Alvarez said a stranger had come to my Queens apartment, claiming to be from Noah's school. The woman knew about the battered blue dinosaur my mother had left me, the one Noah slept with every night.
Sofia overheard.
“I saw that dinosaur in the video,” she whispered.
I returned to Anthony. He immediately sent security to protect Noah, though I made him promise nobody would take my son without my permission.
Anthony told me someone had tampered with my mother's burial records. He could not prove the body in the coffin had been hers.
“My sister Eleanor had a daughter,” he finally admitted. “Rose. They both disappeared eleven years ago. Your mother was Eleanor's nurse.”
Before I could absorb that, Daniel reported Vanessa had been found in the garage, waiting beside Samuel Price, the man who had arranged Margaret's funeral.
Samuel was accompanied by a young woman.
“About twenty,” Daniel said. “And she looks like Margaret Morgan.”
Anthony whispered, “Rose.”
The elevator opened.
A young woman stepped out with dark hair, frightened eyes, and my mother's face.
May you like
But when she looked at me, she said something nobody expected.
“Please don't call me Rose. My name is Lily. And the woman upstairs told me you were going to kill me.”
