Chapter 5 - WHAT EMMA REMEMBERED
Emma stared at the brass key.
Rebecca placed it on the table between them.
“Have you seen this before?”
Emma nodded.
“Where?”
“Daddy had it.”
Rachel froze.
Emma had never called Jonathan that before.
She seemed not to notice.
“He showed me.”
“When?”
“When Mommy was sleeping.”
Rachel looked confused.
“What?”
Emma explained.
One night several weeks earlier, Jonathan had been watching the children while Rachel rested.
He had taken Emma into the backyard.
They sat beneath the old maple tree.
Jonathan showed her the brass key.
Then he asked her a strange question.
If you ever needed to hide something important, where would you put it?
Emma told him she would hide it somewhere nobody grown-up would look.
“Where?” Rebecca asked.
Emma shrugged.
“My treasure place.”
“What treasure place?”
Emma looked at Rachel.
“The old train station.”
Rachel frowned.
Twenty years earlier, an abandoned railway stop had stood near Old Mill Road.
Emma sometimes played near it with Rachel.
There was a row of rusted luggage lockers inside.
“Jonathan took you there?”
“No.”
“I told him about it.”
Rebecca was on her feet immediately.
Forty minutes later, police entered the abandoned station.
Locker 17 opened with the brass key.
Inside sat a metal box.
Rebecca lifted it carefully.
Inside were copies of financial ledgers.
A flash drive.
Three photographs.
And a letter.
Addressed to Emma.
Rebecca did not open it.
Rachel did.
Dear Emma,
If you are reading this, I failed to keep something dangerous far enough away from you.
There is something I should have told you sooner.
I am your father.
Rachel stopped.
She covered her mouth.
Emma waited.
“Keep reading.”
Rachel continued.
Jonathan explained that he had spent almost eight years searching.
That he had dreamed thousands of times about meeting Emma.
That he had been afraid revealing the truth too soon would expose them.
Then came the final paragraph.
There are bad choices I cannot undo.
I trusted people I should not have trusted.
But one thing has always been true.
I loved your mother before you were born.
I loved you before I met you.
And if I get the chance, I will spend the rest of my life proving both.
Emma wiped her face.
“Is he coming back?”
Rachel looked at Rebecca.
The detective answered carefully.
“We’re going to find him.”
The flash drive contained financial evidence.
Enough to prove the charity fraud.
Not enough to identify the mastermind.
But the photographs changed the investigation.
One showed Grant.
One showed Charles.
The third showed a red-haired woman.
Emma pointed immediately.
“That’s her.”
The fake nurse.
Rachel whispered—
“Celeste.”
Rebecca stared.
Grant’s former wife had not moved overseas.
May you like
She had been inside Rachel’s hospital.
And according to financial records, Celeste Ward had been legally dead for six years.
