Chapter 4 - Her Father’s Last Witness
Rebecca Hale lived in a small brick house outside Fairfield.
Claire arrived the following morning without telling Julian where she was going.
Rebecca opened the door before Claire reached the bell.
She was in her late sixties with silver hair and sharp blue eyes.
“You look like Thomas,” she said.
Claire froze.
“You knew my father?”
Rebecca looked past her toward the road.
“Come inside.”
The living room contained no photographs.
No family pictures.
Nothing personal.
Rebecca locked the door.
“Did Julian send you?”
“No.”
“Your mother?”
“No.”
Claire placed her phone on the table.
“I found Project Hawthorne.”
Rebecca’s face changed.
“That means Thomas was right.”
“Right about what?”
“That eventually Julian would get careless.”
Claire showed her the paternity report.
Rebecca did not look surprised.
That frightened Claire more than anything.
“How long did my father know?”
“Long enough to understand the affair was only part of the problem.”
Claire swallowed.
“My husband fathered my sister’s child.”
“Yes.”
“My mother knew.”
Rebecca hesitated.
“Yes.”
Claire gripped the chair.
“Why didn’t anyone tell me?”
“Because Thomas wanted evidence before destroying your life.”
“He died without telling me.”
Rebecca’s eyes filled with sadness.
“Your father did not expect to die when he did.”
Thomas Whitmore had supposedly suffered a heart attack while driving home from his office.
No autopsy had been requested.
He had been sixty-two.
Claire suddenly felt cold.
Rebecca crossed the room and unlocked a steel cabinet.
She removed a sealed envelope.
“Thomas gave this to me three days before he died.”
Claire stared at her name written across it in her father’s handwriting.
“For Claire, when she is ready to know who she is.”
Claire looked at Rebecca.
“Who I am?”
Rebecca sat opposite her.
“The paternity report involving Owen was not the second document Thomas was protecting.”
Claire frowned.
“I saw a file marked document two.”
Rebecca shook her head.
“Julian renamed things after Thomas died.”
Then she pushed the envelope toward Claire.
“There was another test.”
Claire’s fingers went numb.
“What test?”
Rebecca did not answer.
Claire tore open the envelope.
The first page was another DNA report.
This one listed Claire Whitmore.
Thomas Whitmore.
And one sentence beneath their names.
PATERNITY EXCLUDED.
Claire stared at it until the words blurred.
Thomas Whitmore was not her biological father.
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And according to the handwritten note attached beneath the report, Julian had known before he ever asked Claire to marry him.
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