Chapter 9 - THE WOMAN IN THE PHOTOGRAPH
I called Charlotte immediately. She answered from Linda’s apartment, confused and safe. James did not have her. The text had been sent to frighten me—or to make me move without Simone and the investigator.
I sent the message to Simone, who called the police. Then I called Vanessa again. This time she answered in a whisper.
“I didn’t send that text,” she said. “Someone has my phone.”
“Where are you?”
“In the design archive. I locked myself in. James is downstairs.”
“Stay where you are. The police are coming.”
“I found the folder,” she said. “Emily, you need to see the photograph.”
“You can send it to Simone.”
“I already did. But there’s something else. The letter says my mother gave birth to a baby girl, but the child who went home with her was not that baby.”
The words seemed to tilt the world.
“Are you saying you were switched?”
“I don’t know. The letter is from Rose. She says she helped arrange the transfer because a woman was being threatened. She thought she was saving the baby. But later she realized James had changed the records and used the confusion to hide a different child.”
The police reached the building while we were still on the phone. I heard a crash, then Vanessa gasped.
“Emily—he’s here.”
The call cut out.
By the time Simone and I arrived, officers had taken James into a conference room. He was furious, but he had not been arrested. Vanessa sat in the lobby with a blanket over her shoulders, holding a folder against her chest.
She looked at me with red-rimmed eyes. “I’m sorry.”
“Tell me what you found.”
She handed the folder to Simone. Inside was a letter from my mother, a photograph of an adult woman with dark curls, and a photocopy of a sealed adoption record. The adult woman’s face was unfamiliar, but her eyes looked like mine.
The letter explained that Rose had helped a frightened woman named Eleanor deliver a baby under emergency circumstances. Eleanor was not the child’s biological mother; she had been caring for the infant after the death of a relative. The biological mother had been a young woman named Grace, Rose’s niece, who had disappeared after giving birth.
The story became more tangled with every page. James had helped move the baby into a foster placement, claiming it was necessary for the child’s safety. But he had also altered records to prevent anyone from discovering that he had used company funds to pay the placement agency. Rose had kept the dress and the ledger because she suspected the child had been moved again.
“Why would James be involved?” I asked.
Vanessa looked at the floor. “Because he believed the child was connected to the company’s ownership. Your mother had promised to leave part of her design archive to Grace. If Grace were found, she might have a legal claim to some of the original collection.”
Simone’s expression sharpened. “That could explain the forged assignment letter.”
I studied the photograph again. The woman looked about thirty. On its back was a handwritten name: GRACE BENNETT — CURRENTLY KNOWN AS GRACE MILLER.
A current address was attached, in a suburb west of Chicago.
I wanted to go immediately, but Simone insisted we contact the police and verify the information first. An officer called the address. A woman answered, then hung up when he mentioned Rose Bennett.
That evening, James was taken in for questioning over the forged records and financial transfers. He denied knowing where Grace was. He claimed he had acted on my mother’s instructions, but his story changed twice in an hour.
Before he was led out, he asked to speak to me.
“Emily, please. I never meant for any of this to happen.”
“You let me believe my mother’s work belonged to a company that was slowly erasing me.”
“I was trying to protect the business.”
“You were protecting yourself.”
His eyes shone with something that might have been regret. “There’s something you still don’t know.”
“Then tell the police.”
He shook his head. “Not them. You. Grace wasn’t the only child in that hospital that night.”
My breath caught.
“What does that mean?”
He leaned closer, his voice barely audible.
“The baby your mother went looking for wasn’t the baby she found.”
Then an officer pulled him away, and the doors closed behind him.
Simone’s phone rang a minute later. It was the woman from the address we had called.
“I know you’re looking for Grace,” she said. “But the woman in that photograph died six years ago.”
I closed my eyes.
“Then who sent us the photograph?”
May you like
The woman answered in a whisper.
“Her daughter.”
