Chapter 5 - SARAH'S SISTER
Ethan called Emily Morgan.
Sarah's adoptive sister.
Emily arrived that night.
She had been planning to attend the wedding the next morning brunch.
Instead, she walked into a hotel conference room where half the flowers from a canceled wedding still sat unopened in boxes.
Ethan showed her the photograph.
Claire.
Emily sat down.
“Oh my God.”
“You recognize her.”
“Yes.”
Ethan's stomach dropped.
“How?”
Emily looked at him.
“Sarah had that picture.”
Victoria went still.
“What?”
Emily ignored her.
She looked at Ethan.
“Not the pendant. A photocopy.”
“When?”
“During treatment.”
Sarah had died three years earlier from metastatic ovarian cancer.
She had been thirty-four.
Lily was four.
During Sarah's final year, she began searching her adoption history.
Ethan remembered pieces.
Genealogy sites.
A request for medical records.
Sarah closing her laptop whenever Lily entered the room.
He had assumed she was researching hereditary cancer risk.
She was.
And something more.
Emily opened her phone.
“I kept a box she gave me.”
“What box?”
“Things she didn't want Lily seeing until she was older.”
Ethan looked at her.
“Why didn't you tell me?”
Emily's face tightened.
“She asked me not to.”
That hurt.
Not because Emily owed him everything.
Because apparently Sarah had built a room inside her last year that Ethan had never entered.
Emily had not opened the whole box.
She had honored Sarah's request.
But she had photographed one page when Sarah asked her to mail it.
The image remained in her phone backup.
She found it.
A letter from the adoption intermediary.
Birth mother identified: Claire E. Hayes.
Ethan stared.
Date:
Four months before Sarah died.
Victoria whispered:
“She knew.”
Raymond closed his eyes.
Ethan turned toward him.
“You knew Claire's daughter was Sarah Cole.”
“Not then.”
“Victoria?”
“No.”
Victoria looked genuinely shaken.
Emily continued.
Sarah attempted contact.
The intermediary replied that Claire had died the previous year.
Sarah cried for two days.
Then stopped searching outwardly.
“What did she do next?”
Ethan asked.
Emily looked uncomfortable.
“She asked me if she should tell you.”
That hurt worse.
“What did you say?”
“I said yes.”
“And?”
“She said you were already carrying too much.”
Ethan looked away.
Sarah had been in chemotherapy.
Ethan had been working from hospital cafeterias.
Lily was four.
Every day felt like an emergency.
Then Emily handed him another photograph.
Sarah's handwriting on the back:
Claire Hayes. Birth mother. Do not let anyone tell Lily she abandoned me. I don't know enough to say that.
Ethan closed his eyes.
Victoria began crying quietly.
No one comforted her.
Emily looked at Victoria.
“Sarah knew your family name.”
“Yes.”
“She didn't know you.”
“I don't think so.”
Emily's expression sharpened.
“You keep saying that.”
Victoria stopped.
Then Emily took a folded piece of paper from her bag.
“I found this after Sarah died.”
Ethan recognized Sarah's handwriting.
It was addressed:
ETHAN
He stared.
“You never gave me that.”
“No.”
“Why?”
“Because it was inside the box marked for Lily.”
“That says my name.”
Emily looked miserable.
“I know.”
Ethan took it.
The paper had only one paragraph.
If someone from the Hayes family ever comes to Ethan after I'm gone, please don't let them say this started after I died. Someone knew how to find me. I just never figured out who.
Ethan read the sentence again.
Victoria's face changed.
So did Raymond's.
The family secret had just acquired a missing person inside it.
Not Claire.
May you like
Someone living.
Someone who had known where Sarah was before her death.
