Chapter 13 - WHAT REBECCA TOOK TO HER GRAVE
Andrew refused to let anyone excavate Rebecca’s grave without him present.
The cemetery stood on a hill above Briarwood.
Rain had finally stopped.
For the first time in days, sunlight broke through the clouds.
Ashley and Emily remained under protection.
Andrew stood beside the grave while federal technicians carefully removed soil near the headstone.
They did not disturb Rebecca’s coffin.
The coordinates indicated something buried beside it.
Twenty inches down, they found a steel cylinder.
Andrew touched it.
“I never put this here.”
Inside were letters.
Rebecca had prepared them for different people.
Andrew.
Ashley.
Emily.
Laura.
Helen.
Natalie.
The letter to Natalie read:
You may not remember me, but I remembered you.
You were the only officer who looked at my car instead of looking at me like a dead woman.
If Caldwell erases the truth, look at the seat.
Natalie had noticed.
She just had not understood.
Rebecca’s letter to Andrew was longer.
He read it alone.
When he returned, he was crying but calmer.
“She knew she might die.”
“What did she tell you?”
“That she loved me.”
He looked toward the grave.
“And that I shouldn’t spend the rest of my life trying to punish myself for trusting her.”
Natalie asked about Grace.
Andrew handed her the final page.
Rebecca had written:
Grace is not one stolen child.
Grace is evidence of something much older.
Do not assume Hawthorne began with the foundation.
Look at 1989.
Natalie searched archived records.
1989 was the year Rebecca was born.
Also the year Hawthorne’s first clinic opened.
But the foundation was not officially incorporated until 1998.
Something had existed earlier.
A private research program funded by Charles Vale’s father.
Natalie found a name.
The Briarwood Maternal Genetics Study.
Participants included young pregnant women.
Among them:
Eleanor Bennett.
Rebecca and Laura’s mother.
The study claimed to research inherited blood disorders.
Records were sealed.
Most destroyed.
One surviving document referenced Sample R-17.
Natalie compared the code.
Grace’s file used R-214.
The letter R appeared throughout old Hawthorne documents.
Not replacement.
Research.
Rebecca herself had been part of a lineage tracked from birth.
So were Ashley and Emily.
Grace might be another descendant within that genetic line.
The question was how.
Then Laura received a phone call.
Unknown number.
A child’s voice.
“Mom?”
Laura froze.
Natalie put the call on speaker.
“Grace?”
The girl cried.
“I don’t know.”
“What do you mean?”
“The people here call me Anna.”
Natalie traced the call.
“Where are you?”
“I don’t know.”
“Look outside. Tell me what you see.”
“Trees.”
“What else?”
“A big white house.”
Then someone spoke in the background.
The girl gasped.
The call ended.
Tracking failed.
But before disconnecting, one data packet revealed a regional tower.
Within twenty miles of Briarwood.
Grace was close.
Then Ashley, listening from the hallway despite orders, whispered,
“I know the white house.”
Everyone turned.
She pointed to a photograph from Andrew’s recovered evidence.
A mansion behind iron gates.
“I saw it before.”
Andrew crouched.
“When?”
Ashley looked frightened.
“When Daddy was asleep.”
Natalie’s blood ran cold.
“Who took you there?”
Ashley answered,
“Mommy.”
May you like
Rebecca had brought Ashley to the white house before she died.
And Andrew had never known.
