Chapter 15
“So did my mother.”
“Apparently.”
“Do you think Charles Vance did something to her?”
“I don’t know.”
I laughed.
“Alexander taught you that answer?”
“He pays by the hour every time I say it.”
I smiled despite myself.
Then Dana’s expression grew serious.
“There is one thing you should know before we open the case.”
My stomach tightened.
“What?”
“One photograph from the storage box has already been scanned into the court record.”
She pulled out a page.
I expected another corporate document.
Instead, I saw my mother.
Younger than I remembered her.
She stood beside a lake holding a toddler in her arms.
Me.
I knew because of the tiny scar beneath my chin.
On the other side of her stood Alexander.
He looked perhaps thirty.
His hair dark.
His smile easy.
One arm rested around my mother’s shoulders.
The image was intimate.
Not romantic exactly.
But close.
Very close.
On the back of the photograph, someone had written:
Eleanor, Alex and Clara. Summer 2002.
I stared at it.
I would have been two.
“I thought he said he met her through Vanguard.”
“He did.”
“He never said he knew me.”
Dana was silent.
“He held me.”
“Apparently.”
“He knew me before my mother died.”
“Yes.”
I looked toward the door.
A sick feeling rose in my chest.
Alexander had told me the truth.
But not all of it.
And suddenly I understood something important.
Secrets did not always arrive as lies.
Sometimes they arrived as carefully chosen truths.
I stood.
“I want to open the case.”
“Today?”
“Now.”
The locked case sat on a conference table in a neutral document room beneath the county courthouse.
No armored SUVs.
No dramatic security team.
Just me, Dana, Alexander, a court-appointed clerk, and Richard’s attorney, who attended remotely by video.
Richard himself was not permitted to enter.
I preferred it that way.
Alexander stood at the opposite end of the table.
He knew I had seen the photograph.
I could tell from his face.
But he did not approach me.
“Before we begin,” I said, “I want one rule.”
The clerk looked up.
“What rule?”
I looked at Alexander.
“No one takes anything out of this room without my permission unless the court requires it.”
Alexander nodded.
Dana nodded.
The clerk recorded it.
I placed the brass key beside the small wooden case.
It was beautiful.
Dark walnut.
Scratched with age.