Chapter 7 - The Girl Who Was Supposed to Be Dead
Arthur took Emily to his home after the restaurant closed.
It was a grand house overlooking the city, but most of the rooms were dark and unused.
Portraits of the Lancaster family lined the hallway.
Emily stopped in front of one showing Elena at twenty years old.
The resemblance was undeniable.
Arthur stood several steps behind her.
“I should have found you.”
Emily turned.
“You thought I was dead.”
“I should have questioned everything.”
“You were grieving.”
“I trusted Conrad. That was my failure.”
Emily did not know whether to call him Arthur or Grandfather.
Both felt strange.
Arthur seemed to understand.
“You do not owe me affection,” he said. “You do not even owe me belief. I only ask for the chance to prove the truth.”
David arranged a DNA test through two independent laboratories.
The results would take several days.
Meanwhile, Conrad launched a public attack.
His lawyers described Emily as an opportunist who had manipulated a grieving old man. Several news sites published stories about her debt, her apartment, and her employment history.
Photographs of the wine incident were edited to make it appear that Emily had deliberately poured the drink.
Victoria gave an interview outside her family’s mansion.
“My family has nothing against this young woman,” she told reporters. “We are concerned that she may be participating in a fraud.”
Emily watched the interview from Arthur’s library.
“She’s afraid,” Emily said.
David nodded.
“Fear makes powerful people dangerous.”
The next morning, Samuel brought Elena’s cassette.
Arthur listened without moving.
When Elena said she had never abandoned him, his composure broke.
For twenty-two years, he had wondered whether his daughter had left voluntarily after discovering his business problems.
Now he knew she had been trying to save him.
When the tape ended, Arthur asked one question.
“Did she say what happened after leaving Rose?”
“No,” Emily replied.
Samuel placed another document on the table.
“But I may have found someone who knows.”
The nurse who had helped Elena was not Rose.
Rose had been a school secretary.
The recording referred to a nurse who introduced Elena to Rose.
Her name was Nora Alvarez.
Nora had disappeared from public records two weeks after Elena’s crash.
Samuel located her living under a different surname in Arizona.
At first, Nora refused to speak.
Then Emily called her.
“I’m Elena’s daughter.”
The line remained silent.
Emily continued.
“I don’t want money. I don’t want revenge. I only want to know what happened to my mother.”
Nora began crying.
“She came back for you,” she said.
Emily gripped the phone.
“What?”
“Elena returned to Rose’s apartment four days after the crash. She planned to take you to the federal investigators.”
“Why didn’t she?”
“Conrad’s men were waiting.”
Arthur leaned closer to the phone.
“Was she killed?”
“I don’t know,” Nora answered. “They took her away in a black car. But before they did, she gave me something.”
“What?”
“A hospital identification bracelet covered in dried blood. She told me it belonged to the man who sabotaged her car.”
Nora had hidden it for twenty-two years.
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The name printed on the bracelet was not Conrad Hawthorne.
It was Julian Mercer.
