Chapter 2 - THE GIRL IN THE UNIFORM
The doctor said Lily had a bruised cheek.
Nothing more serious.
That should have relieved me.
It didn’t.
Dr. Maya Benton crouched beside her.
“Can I look at your shoulder?”
Lily looked at me first.
That nearly broke something inside me.
“You decide,” I said.
She nodded.
Maya examined the birthmark.
Then her wrists.
Her knees.
No significant injuries.
Old faint scars on one shin.
A callus on one palm.
A child who had done more physical work than a four-year-old should.
“Where did you get the uniform?” Detective Serena Cole asked later.
“Nora.”
“Why?”
“She said I had to work if I wanted food.”
My jaw tightened.
Serena held up a hand.
Not to silence me.
To remind me this was Lily’s interview.
“Where were you living?”
“With Aunt Ruth.”
“Where?”
“A house with chickens.”
“Was Nora there?”
“Sometimes.”
“Did Ethan live there?”
Lily looked at me.
“No.”
“Did you know Ethan before today?”
“Pictures.”
“Who showed you?”
“Aunt Ruth.”
“Why did you call him Daddy?”
“Because she said.”
Not proof.
A child repeating what a caregiver told her.
Still.
The locket was real.
The photograph was real.
The birthmark was real.
The name was real.
My attorney, Leah Morgan, arrived before midnight.
She took one look at me.
“Do not take a private DNA test.”
“I wasn’t—”
“You were.”
I was.
“We preserve chain of custody.”
I looked through the glass at Lily.
“She could be my daughter.”
“Yes.”
“She could be—”
“Yes.”
Leah lowered her voice.
“And if somebody falsified a child’s death four years ago, you want every test defensible.”
Right.
Police seized the phone.
They also seized the shattered teacup.
Nora protested.
“The tea was ordinary.”
Maybe.
No one accused her of poisoning it yet.
Lily had.
A four-year-old accusation was not chemical analysis.
The cup went to the lab.
Nora hired counsel immediately.
She gave one short statement:
Lily Hale was the orphaned child of a distant relative.
She had been brought temporarily to Blackwood House because Ruth Hale had recently died.
The maid uniform was “a game.”
The slap was “an instinctive reaction.”
The locket belonged to Amelia originally but had been given away after her death.
Every sentence sounded almost plausible until placed beside the next.
My late wife’s locket.
My dead daughter’s name.
A child hidden under Nora’s control.
A four-year-old video.
Detective Cole asked me about Amelia’s death.
“Postpartum cardiac collapse.”
“Autopsy?”
“Yes.”
“Cause?”
“Cardiac arrhythmia associated with severe postpartum complications.”
“Any toxicology?”
“I assume.”
“You never read it?”
I hated the answer.
“No.”
I had been thirty-two.
My wife dead.
My newborn reportedly dead.
I signed what doctors and lawyers placed in front of me.
Then I buried both names on one stone.
Serena asked:
“Who told you the baby died?”
The room became cold.
“A hospital administrator.”
“Name?”
“I don’t remember.”
“Was Nora present?”
I closed my eyes.
“Yes.”
She had been.
Nora had held my shoulders while I cried.
Then another memory came.
She had also been the person who packed Amelia’s hospital belongings.
Including the locket.
I looked toward the interrogation-room door.
“What happened to Ruth Hale?”
Serena checked her notes.
“According to Nora, cancer.”
“Can you verify?”
“We will.”
Twenty minutes later, she returned.
“No death certificate under Ruth Hale matching the address Nora provided.”
My pulse rose.
“So Ruth is alive?”
“I didn’t say that.”
“What are you saying?”
“The address belongs to an abandoned farmhouse purchased three years ago by a company called Hale Domestic Services.”
“Hale.”
“Yes.”
“Owner?”
Serena looked at me.
May you like
“Nora Hale.”
And whoever had raised Lily had apparently been living on property Nora controlled.
