Chapter 13 - THE WOMAN BEFORE ME
Vanessa met me through a secure video conference.
Her hair was pulled back.
She wore a county detention uniform.
The confident woman from Gate 42 seemed far away.
“You think Daniel began lying when he met me,” she said.
“I know he lied before you.”
She placed a photograph against the camera.
Daniel stood beside a woman in a courthouse.
The date was fourteen years earlier.
Two years before our wedding.
The certificate beneath it showed a legal marriage.
The woman’s name was Emily Carter.
There was no divorce record.
My breath stopped.
“You are saying my marriage was invalid.”
“I am saying Daniel never legally ended the first one.”
Vanessa claimed Emily disappeared after discovering Richard’s hospital scheme.
Daniel told everyone she moved overseas.
He later declared the marriage abandoned through a private court order.
The order was signed by the same judge connected to Hale Medical.
No valid divorce occurred.
Daniel married me while still legally married.
The revelation was almost absurd after everything else.
Twelve years of marriage.
Two children.
A home.
Taxes.
Anniversaries.
All built beside a legal secret.
“Where is Emily?” I asked.
Vanessa looked away.
“Saint Catherine’s.”
“What is that?”
“A private psychiatric facility owned by Hale Medical.”
The name appeared in my mother’s files.
Saint Catherine’s treated women considered financially or emotionally difficult.
Federal agents raided the facility.
Emily Carter was alive.
She had been confined for thirteen years.
Her records claimed severe delusions.
She had repeatedly told doctors Richard and Daniel stole from hospital charities.
Each complaint was listed as evidence of paranoia.
Daniel visited her four times during the first year of our marriage.
Then never again.
I watched security footage of him entering the facility.
He wore the suit from our first anniversary dinner.
He told me he had emergency surgery that night.
Another hospital lie.
Emily was released under protective care.
DNA records showed she had given birth while confined.
The child was removed through a private adoption.
Daniel was listed as the father.
Somewhere, Sophie and Max had an older half brother or sister.
Daniel denied knowing about the birth.
Emily said he knew.
She remembered him standing beside the hospital bed.
Richard took the baby.
Daniel told her it was safer if she stopped fighting.
The attorney general added unlawful imprisonment and child trafficking investigations.
Daniel’s medical license was immediately suspended statewide.
He requested a meeting with me.
For the first time, I wanted to hear him.
Not because I needed closure.
Because I needed to understand how many lives existed beneath his lies.
He entered the interview room in handcuffs.
I had never seen him without control.
He sat across from me.
“Rachel.”
May you like
I placed Emily’s photograph on the table.
“Tell me what you did.”
