Chapter 4 - The Name That Disappeared)
Police arrived at Bellweather twenty minutes later.
Margaret had called them herself.
Thomas objected until she showed the officers the transfer form bearing his signature.
Then he became silent.
Because the evidence involved events from more than two decades earlier, the officers could not immediately determine what crime had occurred or whether the documents were genuine.
They took statements.
They photographed the papers.
They asked Thomas not to leave the city until detectives could speak with him.
Thomas responded through an attorney he summoned before midnight.
Emily hated how quickly wealth could create walls.
One phone call and Thomas stopped being a frightened husband.
He became a client.
Everything passed through someone else.
By one in the morning, Margaret and Emily were sitting across from each other in Daniel's private office.
Neither knew what to say.
Michael stood near the window.
Daniel had closed the restaurant.
The mysterious black car was gone.
Margaret looked at Emily's pendant.
"May I ask where you got it?"
Emily touched the chain.
"My last foster family had it in the envelope that came with my records."
"You didn't arrive wearing it?"
"I don't know."
Margaret opened her palm.
Her pendant rested there.
"My mother commissioned these before you were born."
Emily flinched at the word you.
Margaret immediately corrected herself.
"Before my daughter was born."
Emily nodded.
"I understand."
"No, I shouldn't assume."
"I don't know what to assume either."
Margaret looked exhausted.
Without the composed posture and elegant expression she had worn at dinner, she seemed smaller.
Human.
"Would you be willing to take a DNA test?"
Emily stared at her.
Margaret's voice became softer.
"You can say no."
Emily looked at the woman who might be her mother.
For years she had imagined finding her biological family.
Her fantasies had been embarrassingly simple.
A woman opening a door.
A shocked face.
A hug.
An explanation.
She had never imagined lawyers, forged death certificates, hospital fires, and a man who might have stolen her life for money.
"Yes," Emily said.
Margaret closed her eyes.
"Thank you."
Michael cleared his throat.
"There is something else we should look at first."
He placed Evelyn Price's notebook on the desk.
The pages contained dates, names, addresses, and fragments of conversations.
One entry had been underlined twice.
September 18.
Infant moved under temporary name Elizabeth Ward.
Emily read it.
"Elizabeth Ward."
Michael nodded.
"That was the first name Evelyn found."
"Where?"
"A private pediatric facility outside Hartford."
Margaret looked up.
"Who owned it?"
Michael's expression answered before he spoke.
"A company controlled by Ashford Holdings."
Emily sat back.
Margaret whispered, "Thomas."
Michael turned several pages.
"The infant remained there for eleven days."
"Then?"
"The records disappear."
Emily frowned.
"How does a baby disappear from a hospital?"
"Someone creates new records."
Daniel leaned against the desk.
"Adoption?"
"Possibly."
Emily looked toward him.
Daniel had said very little since police arrived.
Now his face was unusually tense.
"Daniel?"
He hesitated.
"I need to tell you something."
Emily's stomach tightened.
"What?"
"About three months ago, a woman came here asking about you."
Margaret turned.
"What woman?"
"She said she was looking for an employee named Emily Carter."
Emily stared at Daniel.
"You never told me."
"I thought she was a debt collector or someone connected to your biological family search."
"You knew I was searching."
"That's why I didn't want to get your hopes up."
"What did she look like?"
"Late sixties. Maybe seventy. Gray hair. Thin. She walked with a cane."
Michael went completely still.
"Did she give a name?"
Daniel thought.
"She left a card."
He opened his desk drawer.
After searching for several seconds, he found it beneath a stack of receipts.
Michael took the card.
The name read Helen Voss.
His face changed.
Margaret noticed.
"You know her."
Michael nodded slowly.
"Helen Voss was the private ambulance driver I saw with Thomas outside St. Catherine's."
Emily stood.
"She's alive?"
"Apparently."
Daniel said, "She asked about Emily's schedule."
Emily felt sick.
"Why?"
"I wouldn't give it to her."
"Did she come back?"
"Not inside."
Daniel looked toward the window.
"But after that, I started noticing the black car."
Michael held up the card.
On the back was a handwritten telephone number.
Emily said, "Call her."
Margaret answered immediately.
"No."
Everyone looked at her.
Margaret's eyes were fixed on the card.
"If Helen Voss helped Thomas take my daughter, she has spent twenty two years protecting herself."
Emily said, "Then how else do we find out what happened?"
Margaret thought for a moment.
Then she looked at Michael.
"You said Evelyn traced the baby to Hartford."
"Yes."
"Did she ever find where Elizabeth Ward went next?"
Michael opened the notebook again.
Near the final pages was a line he had never understood.
Blue house. Westbridge. Carter file.
Emily saw the word.
"Carter."
Daniel moved closer.
Michael read it again.
"Carter file."
Emily's heart began pounding.
Her foster records said she entered state care under the temporary name Emily Jane Carter at six months old.
She had always assumed Carter came from the system.
Now she wondered whether it had existed before Nora and James adopted her.
Margaret whispered, "Westbridge is only forty minutes from Hartford."
Emily looked at her.
Margaret looked back.
At two twelve in the morning, the woman who had buried a daughter and the young waitress who had never known a mother made the same decision.
May you like
They would go to Westbridge.
And they would go before Thomas could stop them.
