Chapter 18 - The Man Emily Buried Twice
Emily’s father, Samuel Saint Claire, had officially died twenty-three years earlier in a boating accident.
No body was recovered.
Emily had been nine.
She remembered the funeral.
The empty casket.
Her mother’s white face.
Raymond holding her hand.
Years later, Catherine told Emily that accepting death without a body had been the hardest thing she ever did.
Now Charles claimed Samuel might have survived.
Raymond exploded.
“You are lying.”
Charles smiled.
“Am I?”
He gave investigators a name.
Jonathan Vale.
Founder of Vale Meridian.
Public records described him as seventy-one.
Private.
Rarely photographed.
Living primarily in Geneva.
Raymond searched old corporate photographs.
Most showed Jonathan Vale at a distance.
Then investigators found a passport image from fifteen years earlier.
Emily stared at the screen.
Older.
Thinner.
Gray-haired.
But the eyes were unmistakable.
Her father’s eyes.
Raymond sat down.
“No.”
Emily could barely breathe.
“Why would he leave us?”
Charles answered through the recording.
“Ask him.”
Investigators contacted Swiss authorities.
Jonathan Vale had departed Geneva two days earlier.
Destination unknown.
Emily felt as though the floor beneath her life had disappeared again.
First her husband.
Now her father.
Every relationship seemed to contain a hidden contract.
Then Raymond remembered Catherine’s letter.
They are watching Emily now.
Not he.
They.
“What if Catherine knew Samuel was alive?” Emily asked.
Raymond looked horrified.
“Then why didn’t she tell you?”
“Maybe she was protecting me.”
“From your own father?”
Emily looked at the dormant accounts.
Someone had used Catherine’s identity after her death.
Someone who knew her signatures.
Her structures.
Her secrets.
Someone who had helped build them.
Samuel Saint Claire.
A nurse entered before Emily could say more.
Her face was bright.
“Mrs. Saint Claire Whitmore?”
Emily turned.
“Samuel is breathing without assisted ventilation.”
Everything else disappeared.
Emily covered her mouth.
The nurse smiled.
“You can hold him longer today.”
Emily entered the NICU.
They placed her son against her chest.
He was impossibly small.
Warm.
Alive.
Emily cried into his soft hair.
For twenty minutes, there were no trusts.
No Whitmores.
No secrets.
Just a mother and her child.
Then Raymond entered quietly.
He held a sealed envelope.
“It was delivered downstairs.”
Emily looked up.
“To me?”
He nodded.
“No return address.”
Inside was an old photograph.
Emily at nine years old.
Her father stood beside her.
On the back was fresh handwriting.
Catherine was right to keep you away from me.
May you like
Below that was another line.
But now Raymond has made that impossible.
