Chapter 7 - The Car Outside
Hannah moved behind the hallway wall.
Through the curtain, she saw a black SUV.
Her heart pounded.
Margaret whispered.
"Don't make a sound."
The driver's door opened.
A man stepped out.
Hannah couldn't see his face.
Margaret gripped the edge of the table.
The man approached the front door.
Three knocks.
Margaret didn't answer.
Another knock.
Then a voice.
"Margaret."
Hannah recognized it.
Richard.
Margaret's eyes closed.
He knew.
The door handle moved.
"Margaret, open the door."
Hannah looked toward the back exit.
Margaret pointed.
Go.
Hannah slipped through the kitchen.
She reached the back door.
Before she opened it, Margaret grabbed her wrist.
"Take this."
She pressed the metal box into Hannah's hand.
"What is it?"
"Everything I couldn't destroy."
"Margaret..."
"Go."
Hannah ran.
She reached her car.
She drove without looking back.
Only when she was several miles away did she stop.
She opened the metal box.
Inside were documents.
Photographs.
A cassette tape.
And one sealed envelope.
Her name was written across it.
Hannah Barrett.
She opened it.
Inside was a letter.
My daughter,
If you are reading this, then I failed to protect you.
Hannah's eyes blurred.
The letter continued.
I never stopped looking for you.
I need you to know that I did not give you away.
You were taken from me.
And the people who took you convinced everyone that I had abandoned you.
Hannah pressed a hand to her mouth.
The signature at the bottom was simple.
Emily.
Her mother.
Hannah began to cry.
Not because she had found her.
Because she had finally discovered that someone had been looking for her.
For twenty-eight years.
She called Dean Grant.
"I found my birth mother."
"Is she alive?"
"I don't know."
"What did you find?"
"Proof."
"Where are you?"
"Driving."
"Don't go home."
Hannah slowed.
"Why?"
"Because Richard is there."
She stared ahead.
"How do you know?"
"Your apartment building manager called me."
Hannah's blood ran cold.
"What happened?"
"They said your father entered your apartment."
She turned the car around.
"Did he take anything?"
Dean Grant hesitated.
"We don't know."
Hannah's grip tightened.
Then she remembered the box.
If Richard wanted the truth, he would look for it.
But there was another question.
Why had he waited until graduation?
Why had he suddenly become desperate?
And what had Dean Grant meant when he said Richard was afraid?
Hannah drove toward the university.
She didn't know it yet.
May you like
But the answer was waiting inside the dean's office.
And it involved a name she had never expected to hear.
