Chapter 7 - THE GRANDMOTHER'S LIE
Judith Carter lived in the same yellow house where Daniel and I had grown up.
I hadn't visited in eighteen years.
She opened the door before I knocked.
“Emily,” she said, as though I were expected for Sunday dinner.
Behind me, my daughters stood shoulder to shoulder.
Lily held up the photograph.
“Why were you there?”
Our mother pressed her lips together.
“Because somebody had to make sure those babies arrived safely.”
For a moment I could not speak.
“You knew he was leaving them with me?”
“I knew it was the only way.”
I entered the living room without asking permission.
Nothing had changed: the curtains, the glass cabinet, the framed wedding photograph of our parents.
“Tell me the truth,” I said.
Judith sat heavily in her chair.
She admitted Daniel had come to her with the babies after Rebecca disappeared.
Arthur's people had demanded that Daniel sign away parental authority in exchange for information about Rebecca.
Judith believed separating the children from him was the only way to hide them.
“Why my porch?” I demanded.
“Because he trusted you.”
“Then why didn't either of you tell me?”
Judith's eyes hardened.
“Because you would have tried to rescue everybody.”
She had mistaken my willingness to care for children for permission to control my entire life.
Emma asked whether she had received letters from Rebecca.
Judith went very still.
“Some correspondence,” she admitted.
“How many?”
“I don't remember.”
Sophie walked to the old writing desk and opened its bottom drawer.
Judith sprang from her chair.
“Leave that alone!”
Inside sat a bundle tied with faded green ribbon.
The top envelope was addressed to Emily and the girls.
The postmark was eighteen years old.
There were dozens more beneath it.
I reached for the first and felt my mother's hand close around my wrist.
“You don't understand what those letters would have done,” she said.
“What they would have done?” I whispered.
“Or what they would have exposed?”
Lily lifted the bundle out of the drawer.
At the bottom lay a bank statement showing monthly deposits from Vale Family Holdings into Judith's account.
Our mother had not merely kept a secret.
May you like
She had been paid to keep it.
