By morning, I had shown the messages to Jonathan.
He read them twice.
“Don't respond.”
“I wasn't planning to.”
“Good.”
“Can you trace the number?”
“We'll ask Harris.”
I handed him the phone.
He photographed the screen.
Then he looked at me.
“Did anyone besides the people here know about the DNA investigation?”
“I don't know.”
“That's the problem.”
He sent the messages to Harris.
Two hours later, Harris arrived.
“The number is masked.”
“Can you identify it?”
“Maybe.”
He sat down.
“What photograph?”
“I don't know.”
“That makes two of us.”
He looked at the messages.
“Don't delete anything.”
“I won't.”
Harris left.
Jonathan remained.
“You should go home when you're discharged.”
I looked at him.
“Home doesn't feel safe.”
He nodded.
“Then don't go there alone.”
The statement was simple.
It made the room feel more real.
Eric's house had been our house.
Our photographs were on the walls.
His clothes were in the closet.
Our daughter's nursery waited upstairs.
Yet I no longer knew whether any of those rooms belonged to the life I thought I had.
Later that afternoon, Harris returned.
“We found the photograph.”
I stared at him.
“Where?”
“An archived file from a private investigator.”
“Who hired the investigator?”
“Eric.”
My pulse quickened.
“When?”
“Six months ago.”
The timing again.
“What was the investigator looking for?”
“Daniel.”
He handed me a printed photograph.
I took it.
It showed Claire as a baby.
Madeleine sat on a bench holding her.
Beside them stood Daniel.
He was smiling.
Claire was reaching toward him.
The photograph looked ordinary.
Except for the back.
A handwritten note appeared beneath the date.
She knows.
I looked at Madeleine.
“Did you write this?”
She shook her head.
“I've never seen that photograph.”
“Do you recognize the place?”
She studied it.
“A park near Daniel's house.”
“You knew Daniel?”
“I knew him.”
“Did Eric know you knew him?”
“Yes.”
I turned the photograph over again.
“She knows.”
“Who?”
“I don't know.”
Harris took it.
“The investigator found it in Daniel's old personal effects.”
“Who kept them?”
“His daughter.”
I frowned.
“Daniel had another daughter?”
“Apparently.”
I looked at Jonathan.
He had the same expression I felt.
Confusion mixed with suspicion.
“Who?”
Harris gave us a name.
Sophie Patterson.
She lived in another state.
She had contacted the investigator six months earlier.
“Why?”
“She said she had documents relating to Daniel's estate.”
“What documents?”
“We're trying to obtain them.”
I stared at the photograph.
Claire had been smiling at Daniel.
Not Eric.
Daniel.
For the first time, the DNA result stopped being an abstract laboratory finding.
I could see the possibility in front of me.
A child who looked at a man she recognized.
A man who may have known she was his.
And a family determined to keep that knowledge contained.
That evening, Madeleine asked me whether I wanted to hear something difficult.
I said yes.
She told me Daniel had once confessed that he believed Claire was his daughter.
“When?”
“Before she was born.”
“Did Eric know?”
“I don't know.”
“You must have suspected.”
“I suspected.”
“Then why didn't you tell me?”
“Because I didn't know what was true.”
I looked at her.
“You believed Eric?”
“I believed the life I had with him.”
She looked toward the window.
“That is sometimes harder to admit.”
I understood.
People didn't always stay in lies because they were foolish.
Sometimes they stayed because the truth would destroy too many things at once.
The next day, Sophie called.
She was Daniel's daughter.
Her voice was cautious.
“I've been waiting for someone to contact me.”
“Why?”
“Because I knew Eric would eventually come looking.”
My hand tightened around the phone.
“What does that mean?”
“My father kept records.”
“What kind?”
“Letters. Bank statements. Medical documents.”
“About Claire?”
“Yes.”
“Did he know she was his daughter?”
“He believed she was.”
“Did he tell you?”
“He told me before he died.”
I looked at Jonathan.
He motioned for me to continue.
“Why did you contact Eric's investigator?”
“I didn't.”
Harris, listening on another line, leaned forward.
Sophie continued.
“The investigator contacted me.”
“What did he ask?”
“He wanted my father's records.”
“Did you give them to him?”
“No.”
“Why?”
“Because my father told me never to trust Eric.”
I closed my eyes.
“What did your father know?”
“He knew Eric was hiding Claire.”
“Why?”
“Because Eric told him.”
My stomach dropped.
“Eric told Daniel?”
“Yes.”
“When?”
“Before Claire was born.”
I looked at Madeleine.
She covered her mouth.
Sophie continued.
“My father wanted to acknowledge Claire.”
“What stopped him?”
“Eric.”
“How?”
“I don't know all of it.”
“But you know something.”
“Yes.”
“What?”
“My father wrote a letter.”
“To whom?”
“Eric.”
“Can you send it?”
“I can.”
“Please.”
The call ended.
Ten minutes later, an email arrived.
The letter was scanned.
Jonathan opened it.
We read it together.
Daniel wrote that he believed Claire was his biological daughter and that he was prepared to acknowledge her publicly.
But one paragraph stopped me.
Eric, if you keep denying her, you are not protecting yourself. You are protecting the inheritance from a child who has every right to it.
I looked at Jonathan.
“The money.”
“Yes.”
Another paragraph explained that Daniel had learned about the trust.
He believed Claire was entitled to it.
And he believed Eric had deliberately concealed the child's existence to prevent his father from discovering the truth.
I read the final line twice.
If anything happens to me, make sure Claire is protected from Eric.
My hands shook.
Daniel had died eight years earlier.
Claire had died three years before that.
Both were gone.
And Eric had remained.
I asked Harris, “What happened to Daniel?”
“Heart failure.”
“Was it investigated?”
“Not as a suspicious death.”
“Could it have been?”
“We have no evidence of that.”
The answer didn't reassure me.
It was what he said next that did.
“But we're reopening the financial records around the time of his death.”
I looked at the photograph again.
The note on the back.
She knows.
“Who is she?”
Sophie didn't know.
But later that night, she called again.
“I found the original photograph.”
“What's different?”
“The back.”
“What does it say?”
“There are more words.”
I waited.
Sophie read them aloud.
Madeleine knows.
I felt the room go still.
Madeleine looked at me.
“I don't.”
I believed her.
But somebody had written her name.
And somebody had believed she knew something.
The next morning, another envelope arrived.
Inside was a second photograph.
It showed Eric standing outside the same park.
He wasn't alone.
Beside him was my mother-in-law, Evelyn.
Between them was a folder.
The date was six months before Claire died.
On the back, in Evelyn's handwriting, were four words.
We need to stop him.
Click here to continue reading: PART 11: Evelyn Had Tried to Stop Eric Years Earlier, but the Old Photograph Revealed She Knew Exactly What He Planned to Do
The Name We Chose Together Was Written Down Before Our Daughter Had Even Taken Her First Breath
Part 10 of 20
