Chapter 8 - THE DAUGHTER NO ONE REMEMBERED
I thought grief had already shown me its deepest room.
I was wrong.
My mother’s words opened another door beneath it.
“Twins?”
Margaret nodded weakly.
“A boy and a girl.”
I could not make sense of the sentence.
I remembered one heartbeat on the monitor.
One knitted blanket.
One nurse telling me I had delivered a son.
“There was no girl.”
“There was.”
“Why would everyone hide that from me?”
“Because she was not breathing when she was born.”
My chest tightened.
“Then she died.”
“She started breathing after Samuel treated her.”
Jack leaned closer.
“And you gave her to Thomas too?”
“I had no choice.”
“You keep saying that,” he said.
“You always had choices.”
Margaret closed her eyes.
“Not choices that kept everyone alive.”
“Where is she?” I asked.
“I do not know.”
“Thomas raised Jack.”
“He could not keep both children.”
“Why?”
“Raymond was searching every house.”
“Thomas left the girl with someone he trusted.”
“Who?”
“His sister.”
Jack stepped back.
“My father never had a sister.”
“He did.”
Margaret struggled to breathe.
“Her name was Elaine Price.”
Jack looked toward me.
Dolores Price owned the diner.
I remembered the way she touched Jack’s photograph.
The way she said she remembered him.
“Elaine was Dolores’s sister,” I whispered.
Jack was already reaching for his phone.
Dolores answered after the third call.
Jack placed her on speaker.
“Did my father bring you a baby girl?”
Silence.
“Dolores?”
Her voice shook.
“Who told you?”
I closed my eyes.
The answer was enough.
“Where is she?” I asked.
“She is safe.”
“Where?”
“I promised Thomas.”
“Thomas is dead.”
“So are people who broke promises to Raymond.”
“The truth is already coming out.”
“Not all truth brings freedom, Laura.”
“She is my daughter.”
Dolores began crying.
“I know.”
Jack gripped the phone.
“Is she your daughter too?”
Another silence followed.
Then Dolores answered.
“I raised her.”
Jack sat down in the front pew.
“What is her name?”
“Emily.”
The diner’s night waitress.
The woman who had been shouting orders toward the kitchen when I entered.
The woman who dropped a plate after hearing my mother’s name.
I had barely looked at her.
She had my father’s green eyes.
She had the same small dimple Jack carried beside his mouth.
“She was in the diner today,” I whispered.
“Yes.”
“Did she know?”
“No.”
“You watched me walk past her.”
“I was trying to decide whether telling her would save her or destroy her.”
Jack’s voice turned hard.
“You do not get to make that decision.”
Dolores lowered her voice.
“Raymond is coming here.”
We heard glass break through the phone.
Dolores gasped.
A man shouted in the background.
Then the call ended.
Jack ran toward the chapel exit.
Boone blocked him.
“We go together.”
Owen returned alone.
Rain covered his uniform.
“Raymond took my vehicle.”
“Where is your mother’s grave?” I asked.
His face had become hollow.
“Near the Bennett family plot.”
“Then Raymond is heading toward the diner first.”
Owen removed his badge.
He stared at it.
“My entire life came from that man.”
“No,” Jack said.
“Your entire life survived that man.”
Owen looked at him.
For the first time, they did not look like enemies.
They looked like two children standing inside the same crime.
We left Margaret under police protection.
Owen called the state bureau.
He reported Raymond as armed and dangerous.
When we reached the diner, the front window had been smashed.
Tables had been overturned.
Blood marked the floor behind the counter.
Dolores lay unconscious near the kitchen.
Emily was gone.
A message had been carved into the wooden countertop.
BRING THE REAL LEDGER TO SAINT AGNES.
Jack touched the empty space beneath his vest.
Raymond already had the original ledger.
Boone examined the carving.
“He does not want the book.”
“Then what does he want?” I asked.
Jack looked toward the abandoned hospital on the hill.
“He wants the last person who can prove what happened there.”
May you like
I stared at the blood on the floor.
“My daughter.”
