Chapter 13 - EVELYN’S SILENCE
Evelyn denied Helena’s accusation immediately.
“I never knew you had a daughter.”
Helena laughed from the interrogation room.
“I did not say you knew she was my daughter.”
“I said you knew Anna existed.”
Evelyn became silent.
Julian watched her.
“Did you know my biological mother?”
Evelyn sat slowly.
“Anna worked for Richard.”
“That is not an answer.”
“I met her several times.”
“How many?”
Evelyn looked toward the floor.
“More than several.”
Clara saw the truth before Evelyn admitted it.
“You investigated her.”
Evelyn nodded.
Eighteen years after Rose disappeared, Evelyn suspected Richard was having an affair with Anna.
She hired a private investigator.
The investigator found no proof of a romantic relationship.
Instead, he discovered that Anna had been searching sealed adoption records.
Evelyn assumed Anna was attempting to locate her own birth parents.
She never connected the search to Helena.
“What happened after Anna became pregnant?” Julian asked.
“Richard denied the child was his.”
“Did you believe him?”
“No.”
Julian’s jaw tightened.
Evelyn continued.
“I confronted Anna outside the foundation hospital.”
“She told me the baby belonged to a man who could not return.”
“Victor,” Clara said.
“Yes.”
“But I believed she was lying to protect Richard.”
Evelyn had used her influence to remove Anna from Richard’s office.
She had also recommended that the foundation hospital refuse to treat Anna under an employee charity program.
“I thought she had private insurance,” Evelyn said.
“She didn’t,” Julian replied.
“I learned that later.”
“How much later?”
“After she died.”
The room seemed to shrink around them.
Evelyn’s decision had not been part of Helena’s plan.
It had been an act of jealousy and power.
It contributed directly to Anna’s death.
Julian stood.
“I need to leave.”
Evelyn reached for him.
He stepped away.
“Do not ask me to forgive you today.”
“I wasn’t going to.”
“You always ask without using the words.”
Julian walked out.
Clara followed him into the hallway.
He stopped near a window overlooking the city.
“I spent my entire life believing she rescued me.”
“She did raise you.”
“She helped create the circumstances that made me an orphan.”
Clara had no comforting answer.
Julian looked at her.
“She ripped your dress.”
“She tried to buy you out of my life.”
“She denied medical care to my mother.”
“And now we are expected to celebrate because she lost a daughter?”
“No.”
Clara moved beside him.
“We are not expected to do anything.”
“She can be your mother and still be responsible for terrible choices.”
“She can be my biological mother and still have no right to immediate forgiveness.”
Julian closed his eyes.
“I don’t know who I am without the Ashfords.”
“You are the man who stopped your mother from humiliating me.”
“I was too late.”
“You are the man who entered a burning hotel floor to protect evidence.”
“You are the man who followed Helena into a tunnel.”
“Those choices belong to you.”
Julian looked at her.
“What about the wedding?”
Clara touched the pendant at her neck.
“We finish the truth first.”
“We decide our future after.”
Later that evening, Daniel received the full genetic results.
Clara was Evelyn’s biological daughter.
Victor was Julian’s biological father.
Anna Mercer was Julian’s biological mother and Helena’s biological daughter.
Clara and Julian shared distant family ancestry through Samuel Ashford, but they were not close genetic relatives.
There was no legal or medical barrier to their marriage.
Yet the report included another discovery.
Clara’s genetic profile indicated that Evelyn was not her only living parent.
Richard Ashford had not died nineteen years earlier from natural causes as the family believed.
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A government database contained a recent partial match connected to a man using another identity.
Clara’s father might still be alive.
