Chapter 5 - The Morning After the Impossible
Adrian spent the wedding night in the sitting room.
Lily remained in the bedroom with the door unlocked.
Neither slept.
At sunrise, the candles had burned down to pools of wax. The old photograph still rested on the bed, though Lily had placed it inside a clean handkerchief as if it were evidence from a crime.
Adrian knocked before entering.
Lily had changed into a simple white robe. Her wedding gown hung near the window.
“What happens now?” she asked.
“We get answers.”
“And until then?”
Adrian struggled to speak.
The idea that Lily might be his sister made him physically ill. Yet when he looked at her, he also saw the woman he had loved for three years.
Both realities could not exist together.
“We stay apart,” he said. “We don’t make assumptions, and we don’t allow anyone to destroy records before we see them.”
Lily nodded, although the words hurt.
They called their parents to a private conference room.
Rachel and David arrived first. Thomas and Evelyn followed.
Adrian placed the photograph on the table.
Rachel stared at it.
David looked from the picture to Lily’s face.
Evelyn gripped the back of a chair.
Thomas whispered, “I was afraid of this.”
Adrian turned on him.
“You knew?”
“I suspected.”
“You watched us get married.”
“I did not know about the scar.”
“You knew she might be connected to the fire.”
Thomas lowered his head.
Lily faced Evelyn.
“Was I the child who lived in your house?”
Evelyn’s eyes filled with tears, but she said nothing.
“Answer her,” Adrian demanded.
Thomas intervened.
“Before anyone says something that cannot be taken back, we need a DNA test.”
“We need the truth,” Adrian replied.
“The test will give us part of it.”
Rachel opened Lily’s adoption folder and placed it beside the photograph. Ruth Calder’s name appeared on three different documents.
Evelyn reacted immediately.
“That woman.”
Everyone turned toward her.
“You know Ruth Calder?” Lily asked.
Evelyn looked toward Thomas.
His silence gave her permission.
“Ruth handled the private placement of the little girl who lived with us,” Evelyn said. “She also controlled the records after the fire.”
Adrian felt the room closing around him.
“Little girl?” he repeated. “You mean my sister.”
Evelyn covered her mouth.
Thomas answered instead.
“The child in the photograph was not born into our family.”
Adrian stared at him. “You said she was a relative.”
“That was the story we gave the press.”
“Why?”
“Because her placement with us had not been legally completed. We were trying to protect her.”
Lily’s voice shook. “What was her name before you called her Lily?”
Evelyn looked directly at her.
“Amelia.”
Rachel inhaled sharply.
Lily’s adoption papers listed the same name.
Adrian pushed back his chair.
“So she is the girl.”
“Possibly,” Thomas said.
Adrian pointed at Lily. “Then you allowed me to marry someone who lived in our home as my sister.”
Thomas’s expression hardened with pain.
“You were children. She stayed with us for less than five months. And there is something else you do not understand.”
“Then explain it.”
Evelyn began crying.
May you like
Thomas looked at his son.
“The child was never legally your sister.”
