“Call them back.”
Claire hit Marlene’s number before I finished speaking.
No answer.
Again.
Nothing.
She tried Daniel.
Voicemail.
My mother stood beside me with both hands over her mouth.
“Something happened.”
“I know.”
Claire’s face on the screen had gone pale.
“Evan, I’m going there.”
“No.”
“Don’t.”
Her eyes flashed.
“My mother and possibly my sister are inside a building with the man who may have killed Rebecca.”
“And Daniel is there.”
“That doesn’t make me feel better.”
“I know.”
“You don’t get to tell me to stay.”
“No.”
That stopped her.
I shifted Luca against my shoulder.
“I’m not telling you what to do. I’m reminding you that you’re four days out from surgery, you’re in pain, and we have no idea whether that office is dangerous.”
Claire closed her eyes.
“So what do I do?”
The question sounded different from the questions she had asked me after Luca came home.
Not “tell me because you are responsible for thinking.”
This was a frightened partner asking another frightened partner to think with her.
“We call emergency services to that address.”
Daniel had distrusted local police.
But screaming through a phone line changed the calculation.
Claire nodded.
“I’ll do it.”
She dialed.
I called Marlene again while Claire gave the dispatcher Voss’s office address.
This time someone answered.
No words.
Only movement.
“Marlene?”
I heard breathing.
“Marlene, say something.”
Then Daniel.
“We’re okay.”
Claire almost collapsed into her chair.
“What happened?”
“Not on speaker.”
“You are on speaker.”
“Take me off.”
“No.”
Daniel swore.
“We’re leaving.”
“Who screamed?”
“Anna.”
Claire stopped breathing.
“She’s there?”
“Yes.”
The camera shook as Marlene’s phone changed hands.
Then a woman appeared.
For half a second I forgot how to breathe.
She looked like Claire after ten years of harder living.
Same dark eyes.
Same narrow bridge of the nose.
Same habit of pressing her lips together before speaking.
The resemblance was unmistakable and somehow not identical.
“Claire?”
The woman’s voice broke on the name.
Claire covered her mouth.
“Anna?”
The woman nodded.
Both of them began crying.
Not loudly.
Not theatrically.
Just tears arriving faster than either woman could stop them.
For several seconds neither knew what to say.
Then Anna smiled through the tears.
“You have Mom’s chin.”
Claire laughed once.
“So do you.”
The simplicity of it nearly undid everyone watching.
Marlene turned away.
My mother sat down.
Even Daniel looked toward the floor.
Claire touched the screen.
“Are you hurt?”
“No.”
“What happened?”
Anna looked behind her.
“We need to leave.”
“Where’s Voss?”
“In his office.”
“And Pike?”
Anna’s expression hardened.
“With him.”
Daniel said, “We’re getting in the car.”
Claire looked at me.
“The police are coming.”
Daniel swore.
“Why did you call them?”
“Because somebody screamed.”
“Claire—”
“No.”
Her voice sharpened.
“No more disappearing evidence because everyone is afraid of the wrong person.”
Anna nodded.
“She’s right.”
Daniel stared at her.
“You don’t know these people.”
“I know exactly who they are.”
Marlene whispered, “How?”
Anna looked at her.
“Because Peter left records.”
“The messages were you?”
“No.”
That surprised us.
Claire leaned closer.
“Then who?”
Anna shook her head.
“I don’t know.”
Daniel looked suspicious.
“You expect us to believe that?”
Anna turned toward him.
“I expect nothing from you.”
The resemblance between the sisters became almost eerie in that moment.
Same cold steadiness.
Same refusal to flinch when Daniel’s voice hardened.
He looked away.
Sirens became audible through the phone.
Daniel opened the passenger door.
“Anna, get in.”
She didn’t move.
“Why should I?”
“Because the police are coming.”
“That’s why I’m staying.”
Marlene stepped toward her.
“Please.”
Anna looked at Marlene for a long moment.
“You’re my aunt.”
Marlene’s face crumpled.
“Yes.”
“You raised Claire.”
“Yes.”
“Did you know about me?”
“No.”
Anna studied her, then nodded.
“I believe you.”
Marlene began crying again.
The first patrol car arrived before they could leave.
Daniel moved away from the entrance.
Two officers approached.
Anna immediately held both hands where they could see them.
“We called,” Claire said over the phone.
Marlene nodded.
The next several minutes became confused.
Questions.
Names.
Separate conversations.
Daniel had apparently entered Voss’s office after hearing Anna shouting. Pike had tried to pull Anna into an examination room while Voss stood behind the desk. Daniel intervened. Marlene screamed when Pike shoved him into a cabinet.
The officers separated everyone.
Voss insisted Anna had come to threaten him.
Anna said she had come only to ask for records.
Pike claimed he had been there by coincidence.
Nobody believed that coincidence.
The officers did not arrest anyone.
Daniel was furious.
Claire was unsurprised.
Anna merely watched.
When the police finally let them leave, she agreed to go with Marlene.
Daniel drove.
Marlene sat beside him.
Anna sat in the back, keeping herself framed on the video call.
Claire could not stop looking at her.
“How long have you known?”
Anna understood immediately.
“That I had a sister?”
“Yes.”
“Five years.”
Claire recoiled.
“Five years?”
“I didn’t know your name at first.”
“How?”
“Peter’s papers.”
“You had them?”
“Some.”
“Where did you get them?”
Anna looked out the window.
“From the green house.”
My mother stood.
“What?”
Anna saw her on screen.
“You’re Elaine.”
“Yes.”
“Thomas’s wife.”
“Yes.”
Anna gave a small nod.
“Thomas told Peter the house would be safe.”
“When?”
“Before Peter died.”
“How did you find it?”
“A storage key.”
Claire frowned.
“Where?”
“Inside Rebecca’s old coat.”
Marlene turned from the passenger seat.
“The red coat?”
Anna nodded.
Claire’s face changed.
“The one I remember.”
Anna looked at her.
“You remember it?”
“A red coat in a car.”
“Our mother had one.”
Claire stared.
Anna continued.
“She hid a key inside the lining.”
“How did you get the coat?”
“A woman gave it to me when I turned eighteen.”
“Who?”
Anna hesitated.
“A foster mother.”
Marlene covered her mouth.
“You grew up in foster care?”
“Mostly.”
Daniel looked at her through the mirror.
“Who took you from the hospital?”
Anna’s expression changed.
“That’s what I went to ask Voss.”
“Do you know?”
“I know who signed the transfer.”
“Who?”
“Leonard Voss.”
Claire gripped the table.
“Transfer to where?”
“A private neonatal facility seventy miles away.”
“Why?”
“The record says respiratory complications.”
“You were sick?”
“No.”
“How do you know?”
“Because the medical file has two blood types.”
Elaine leaned forward.
“What?”
Anna nodded.
“One infant record was substituted for another.”
“Meaning?”
“The sick baby wasn’t me.”
Daniel slowed the car.
“Whose baby was it?”
Anna looked at him.
“I don’t know.”
Claire whispered, “Voss switched you with another child.”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“To erase me.”
The words settled heavily.
“Who raised you first?” I asked.
“A couple named Mercer.”
Daniel nearly hit the brakes.
Claire saw his face.
“What?”
“Harold Mercer.”
“The judge?”
“Yes.”
Anna nodded.
“He and his wife were my legal guardians until I was six.”
No one spoke.
“The same judge who gave Daniel custody of Claire,” I said.
“Yes.”
Daniel looked sick.
“What happened when you were six?”
“Mrs. Mercer died. Harold started drinking. I entered foster care after he was arrested.”
“For what?”
Anna looked at Claire.
“Assault.”
“Did he ever tell you who you were?”
“Once.”
“What did he say?”
“He said my mother made rich men afraid.”
Marlene cried quietly.
Anna looked away.
“When I was eighteen, one of my former foster mothers gave me a box Mercer had left with her lawyer. That box contained Rebecca’s red coat.”
Claire’s eyes filled.
“And the key.”
“Yes.”
“To Elaine’s green house.”
“Yes.”
My mother sank back into her chair.
“What did Peter leave there?”
Anna met her eyes.
“A ledger.”
Daniel whispered, “Victor’s?”
“Partly.”
“Where is it?”
“Safe.”
“Do you have it?”
“Yes.”
Daniel gripped the wheel.
“That book could get you killed.”
Anna gave a humorless smile.
“It nearly has.”
Claire leaned toward the screen.
“What’s in it?”
“Payments. Dates. Account transfers. Names.”
“Voss?”
“Yes.”
“Victor?”
“Yes.”
“Daniel?”
Silence.
Daniel looked at Anna through the mirror.
She answered.
“Yes.”
Marlene closed her eyes.
Daniel said nothing.
“Thomas?” Claire asked.
Anna nodded.
“Yes.”
My mother began crying.
I asked the question nobody else wanted to.
“Rebecca?”
Anna looked straight at me.
“Yes.”
Claire whispered, “My mother was involved?”
“Not the way you think.”
“Then how?”
“She was tracing money Peter found.”
“What did she discover?”
Anna opened her bag.
She removed a sealed plastic sleeve containing several folded pages.
“This.”
The camera caught only part of the document.
At the top was a trust number matching the one in the bank transfer sent to us earlier.
Below it was a handwritten note.
I recognized my father’s writing.
PROTECT BOTH GIRLS. ONE IS BENNETT’S. THE OTHER MUST NEVER BE LINKED TO V.S.
Claire stared.
“V.S.?”
Marlene whispered, “Victor Shaw.”
Anna shook her head.
“No.”
Daniel looked back at her.
“What?”
“Victor wasn’t Claire’s father.”
“Then who is V.S.?”
Anna unfolded another page.
A full name had been written there.
Vincent Shaw.
My mother gasped.
Daniel whispered, “Victor’s son.”
Claire looked completely lost.
“Who is Vincent Shaw?”
Daniel’s face had changed again.
“The man who disappeared in 1996.”
“Why?”
“Because Victor told everyone he was dead.”
Anna looked into the camera.
“He wasn’t.”
Claire’s eyes widened.
Anna held up one final photograph.
A younger Rebecca stood beside a man with pale eyes and dark hair.
His arm was around her.
On the back, Peter had written:
Rebecca and Vincent. July 1994.
Nine months before Claire and Anna were born.
Anna said quietly, “Vincent Shaw was your father, Claire.”
Then she looked toward Daniel.
“And Daniel was mine.”
Click here to continue reading: PART 12: Anna’s Ledger Connected Both Our Fathers to the Same Missing Fortune, and One Final Entry Put Luca at the Center of It
Four Hours After Surgery, One Ordinary Question Made My Wife Look at Me Like a Stranger
Part 11 of 28
