Chapter 10 - THE ORIGINAL
I didn’t open anything else.
Mara had warned me that shared devices and accounts could get complicated. I photographed the notification as it appeared, then called her.
She asked us to set the tablet aside.
“Don’t start searching through it.”
“I won’t.”
“What original could they mean?”
I thought about the papers in Hannah’s folder.
Then about my mother.
Mom had kept important things in a blue accordion file. Tax returns. Insurance policies. Handwritten lists no one else could understand.
After she died, Dad had given it to me.
Ryan called it clutter.
I had refused to throw it away.
“It’s at the house,” I said.
Mara went quiet.
“Where?”
“In a cabinet under the nursery window.”
We arranged a time to retrieve personal belongings with help from counsel and a police standby. I wasn’t going alone.
When I walked into our house, it smelled like the lemon cleaner I used every Sunday.
My coat was still on its hook.
A bowl of oranges sat on the counter.
The normalness made me feel sick.
Ryan wasn’t there.
I went upstairs with Tessa while Dad waited below.
The nursery door was open.
The crib stood half assembled.
On the wall, pale green paint ended at the corner where I had stopped to answer Ryan’s call.
Tessa touched my elbow.
“File first.”
I knelt carefully at the cabinet.
The blue folder was gone.
So were the little socks I’d bought after the ultrasound.
I checked the shelf twice.
Then I saw the trash can.
A torn piece of blue plastic stuck out beneath a paper towel.
My hands started shaking.
Tessa crouched beside me and pulled out several ripped documents without digging further.
“Claire.”
“What?”
She held up the bottom half of a letter.
My mother’s name was on it.
So was the name of a company I recognized from Daniel’s report.
My trust had owned a small interest in a property years before Ryan ever met me.
He hadn’t found my money by accident.
He had known it was there.
Downstairs, Dad called my name.
His voice was sharp.
We hurried to the landing.
A delivery envelope lay on the floor inside the front door.
May you like
It was addressed to me.
Inside was a photograph of Dad’s house, taken from across the street that morning.
