Chapter 8 - THE MOTHER WHO NEVER STOPPED SEARCHING
Laura Bennett was alive.
Federal investigators found her under another surname in a motel outside Denver.
She had spent seven years searching for a daughter officially recorded as dead.
When agents explained why they wanted to speak with her, she refused to travel.
Natalie flew to Colorado.
Laura opened the motel door holding a folder thick with documents.
She looked exhausted.
Not surprised.
“You’re about Rebecca.”
Natalie nodded.
Laura invited her inside.
The walls were covered with maps.
Clinic names.
Doctors.
Newspaper clippings.
Missing-child photographs.
“You’ve been investigating Hawthorne yourself.”
“For seven years.”
Laura’s daughter, Grace, had been born healthy.
Laura heard her cry.
Held her for less than a minute.
Then a nurse took the infant away.
Two hours later, Laura was told Grace had suffered cardiac arrest.
She requested to see the body.
Denied.
She requested autopsy records.
Lost.
She requested hospital security video.
Camera malfunction.
Rebecca later contacted her secretly.
“She told me Grace was alive,” Laura said.
“Did Rebecca know where?”
“For a while.”
Laura handed Natalie a photograph.
A wealthy couple stood beside a toddler at a country club.
The child had a dark mark near her left eyebrow.
Natalie recognized it.
The baby from the Parker mantel photograph.
“Who are they?”
“Charles and Miriam Vale.”
The Vales were prominent donors.
Charles Vale had chaired the Hawthorne Foundation board.
They died in a plane crash three years earlier.
Their adopted daughter?
Public records said they had no children.
But the photograph proved otherwise.
“Where is Grace now?”
Laura looked at Natalie.
“That’s what Rebecca was trying to tell me the night she died.”
Rebecca was supposed to meet Laura.
She never arrived.
Instead her car was found at Mercer Bridge.
Natalie felt every piece tighten.
“What did Rebecca say before the meeting?”
Laura opened an email.
One line.
I FOUND OUT WHO GRACE REALLY IS.
Not where.
Who.
Laura watched Natalie carefully.
“Rebecca believed my daughter’s identity had been changed more than once.”
“Why?”
“To make tracking impossible.”
Natalie showed her photographs of Ashley and Emily.
Laura’s face drained of color.
“Oh God.”
“What?”
Laura touched Ashley’s image.
“I’ve seen her before.”
“Where?”
“Not Ashley.”
Laura searched the folder.
She removed another photograph.
Taken six years earlier at a clinic fundraiser.
A group of children stood beneath balloons.
Near the back was a little girl who looked almost exactly like Ashley.
Older than Ashley would have been at the time.
Same eyes.
Same hair.
Same smile.
“What was her name?” Natalie whispered.
Laura turned over the picture.
Someone had written:
GRACE V.
If the date was correct, Grace was approximately ten now.
Not seven.
She could not be Ashley or Emily.
But the resemblance was impossible to dismiss.
Natalie returned to Briarwood carrying more questions than answers.
Andrew examined Grace’s photograph.
He sat down.
“She looks like Rebecca.”
“Exactly.”
Andrew shook his head.
“No. Not exactly.”
He retrieved an old photograph of Rebecca as a child.
Placed them side by side.
Grace looked nearly identical.
Natalie asked the only question that made sense.
“Did Rebecca have a sister?”
Andrew looked stunned.
“She was an only child.”
That night, DNA testing was authorized.
Ashley.
Emily.
Andrew.
Archived tissue from Rebecca.
Results would take time.
But one preliminary test arrived before midnight.
Ashley and Emily were sisters.
Andrew was their biological father.
Then the technician called again.
“There’s another finding.”
Natalie put the phone on speaker.
“The girls appear to have a first-degree maternal relationship to the Bennett sample provided from Colorado.”
Andrew stared at Laura’s file.
“What does that mean?”
May you like
The technician hesitated.
“It means Laura Bennett may be their biological aunt.”
