Chapter 13 - THE CHILD IN THE PHOTOGRAPH
Richard was taken back to the mansion under guard.
The police were called, though Daniel warned Emily that Richard’s connections would complicate everything.
The banquet guests had been sent home.
Martin had been transported to a private hospital under police watch.
Ashley sat in the morning room wrapped in a blanket, staring at nothing.
Emily confronted Thomas in the library.
“Was Laura my mother?”
Thomas closed the doors.
“She raised you as her daughter.”
“That is not what I asked.”
He leaned heavily against a chair.
“No.”
The answer should have shattered Emily.
Instead, she felt numb.
“Who was my mother?”
“I don’t know.”
“You expect me to believe that?”
“Laura came to my shop carrying a baby. You were six weeks old. She said your parents had been killed and that the Blackwoods would search for you.”
“Why?”
“She wouldn’t tell me.”
“You raised me for twelve years believing Laura gave birth to me.”
“She loved you. She chose you.”
Emily shook her head.
“Everyone keeps explaining love as if it excuses deception.”
Thomas looked wounded.
“I wanted to protect you.”
“From what?”
“I still don’t know.”
Daniel entered quietly.
Emily turned on him.
“How much did you know?”
“Nothing about this.”
“Nothing?”
“I knew Laura’s records listed you as her child. I knew Richard challenged those records. I believed he was lying to break your claim.”
“Did you marry me because I was connected to the trust?”
“No.”
Daniel answered without hesitation.
Emily wanted to believe him.
But every certainty had become dangerous.
“Why were you at my father’s repair shop the day we met?”
“My watch was broken.”
Thomas looked up.
“No, it wasn’t.”
Daniel frowned.
Thomas continued.
“I examined it myself. There was nothing wrong with the mechanism.”
Emily remembered Daniel returning three days later.
“You told me the watch kept losing time.”
Daniel looked genuinely confused.
“It did.”
Thomas opened a drawer and removed an old repair ticket.
“Someone had placed a magnetic strip inside the case. It interfered with the movement and contained my shop address.”
Daniel took the ticket.
“Who had access to the watch?”
“My father,” he said slowly. “It belonged to him before he gave it to me.”
Emily felt cold.
Richard had engineered their meeting.
Daniel shook his head.
“That doesn’t mean he knew we would fall in love.”
“No,” Emily said. “But he wanted us to meet.”
Thomas sat down.
“Because their marriage activated the trust.”
Daniel looked at Emily.
“Richard knew before either of us.”
A knock sounded at the door.
Mrs. Greene entered carrying the velvet jewelry box Daniel had given Emily.
“This was found beneath the kitchen sink.”
Emily had forgotten it during the chaos.
Daniel took the box and handed it back to her.
“I wanted you to open it before any of this happened.”
Emily lifted the lid.
Inside was not a necklace.
It was a brass key.
Identical to the one Thomas had given her.
Beside it lay a folded note in Laura’s handwriting.
Emily looked at Daniel.
“Where did you get this?”
“Geneva.”
She opened the note.
Two keys open the last record.
One was entrusted to Thomas.
The other was hidden where Richard would place it in his own son’s hands.
When the two heirs stand together by choice, not by arrangement, the truth may be recovered.
Emily read the sentence again.
“Two heirs.”
Daniel removed his father’s antique watch from his pocket.
He pried open the back.
Inside was a keyhole.
Thomas placed Emily’s brass key into one side.
Daniel inserted the second key into another.
They turned both at the same time.
The watch case released.
Inside was a tightly rolled strip of microfilm.
Mrs. Greene brought an old viewer from the archive.
The first image showed a hospital nursery.
Six babies lay in separate bassinets.
A date appeared beneath the photograph.
It was Emily’s birth date.
The next image showed Laura standing beside Marianne Laurent.
Ashley’s mother.
Between them was a nurse Emily did not recognize.
Laura held one baby.
Marianne held another.
On the back of the original photograph, enlarged through the viewer, someone had written:
One child carries the Blackwood blood.
The other carries the name that will protect her.
Emily stared at the two infants.
“Which one am I?”
Daniel advanced the film.
The next frame was damaged.
Only part of a typed sentence remained visible.
SUBJECT E TRANSFERRED TO THOMAS CARTER.
SUBJECT A RETAINED BY MARIANNE LAURENT.
Ashley stood in the doorway.
Her face was white.
“Subject A,” she whispered.
Emily turned toward her.
May you like
Ashley walked slowly into the room.
“My name is Ashley.”
