Chapter 10 - The Name on the Trust
Emergency lights came on.
I stayed where I was.
Police moved.
Hale disappeared.
By evening, a warrant had been issued.
He was gone.
But the recording from our meeting gave investigators what they needed to reopen everything.
The Carter trust was frozen temporarily.
The Whitmore board fractured.
Daniel remained suspended.
Our lives became public.
Reporters waited outside.
Headlines called Claire Daniel’s “mystery blonde.”
She hated that.
“So apparently I’m glamorous now,” she said.
We were sitting in Margaret’s kitchen.
I smiled.
“You did wear an emerald satin dress to a mall.”
“I was working.”
“You looked suspiciously fabulous.”
Claire laughed.
It was strange.
I had once thought she was the enemy.
Now she was becoming the only person in the room who understood what it felt like to have the Whitmore family’s secrets rearrange your life.
Noah entered.
He looked at me.
“Can I ask something?”
“Sure.”
“Are you mad at Daniel?”
Daniel was across the room.
He pretended not to listen.
“Yes.”
Noah nodded.
“But you still love him?”
Children were ruthless.
“Yes.”
Daniel looked at me.
I continued.
“Love and trust aren’t the same thing.”
Noah considered that.
“Can trust come back?”
“I don’t know.”
That was the truth.
Later, Stephen found something in the trust documents.
A second beneficiary.
I stared at the name.
“Who is Anna Carter?”
Margaret frowned.
“My father had no other children.”
Stephen looked uncomfortable.
“Thomas did.”
I stood.
“No.”
“A daughter.”
“My father had another daughter?”
“Before he met your mother.”
My entire body went cold.
“Where is she?”
Stephen looked at the document.
“She would be about forty.”
Daniel began searching records.
Anna Carter.
No match.
Anna Louise Carter.
Nothing.
Then Claire whispered, “Try Hale.”
We looked at her.
“What?”
“Victor Hale.”
Daniel typed.
Anna Hale.
A result appeared.
A corporate attorney.
Age forty-one.
Chicago.
Photograph.
I stopped breathing.
I knew her.
She was one of Daniel’s board members.
And she had voted to suspend him.
My half-sister had been sitting across from my husband for years.
We called the police.
Too late.
Anna Hale had disappeared.
Victor Hale was not her father.
He was her adoptive uncle.
Which meant she had grown up inside the very family that stole from ours.
My phone rang.
Anna.
I answered.
“Hello, Emily.”
“Where are you?”
“I need to see you.”
“Why?”
“Because Victor lied to both of us.”
“About what?”
“Everything.”
She gave me an address.
Daniel shook his head.
I asked Anna, “Why should I trust you?”
“You shouldn’t.”
A pause.
“But if you want to know why your father died, come.”
The call ended.
Daniel stared at me.
“You’re not going.”
I picked up my coat.
This time, he didn’t try to stop me.
May you like
He simply picked up his.
And followed.
