Chapter 5 - The Woman Who Wore My Mother’s Face
The woman in the doorway smiled.
"Elena..."
My body went completely still.
Because it was her.
Not someone who looked like her.
Not someone pretending.
Her.
The same eyes.
The same soft expression.
The same small scar above her eyebrow.
The same necklace resting against her collarbone.
My mother's necklace.
The woman I had buried twelve years ago was standing ten feet away from me.
Alive.
I couldn't hear the alarms anymore.
I couldn't hear Adrian breathing.
I couldn't hear Marianne whispering something beside me.
All I could hear was my own heartbeat.
"Mom?"
The word escaped before I could stop it.
The woman's eyes filled with tears.
And for one second...
Just one second...
I wanted to believe.
I wanted to run into her arms.
I wanted to feel the warmth of the person I had spent half my life missing.
Then Adrian grabbed my wrist.
Hard.
"Don't."
I looked at him.
His face was pale.
Not because he was weak.
Because he was terrified.
"That's not her."
The woman in the doorway looked hurt.
A real hurt.
The kind only a mother could show.
"Elena, don't listen to him."
Her voice cracked.
"He doesn't know what they did to me."
I stepped forward.
Marianne moved in front of me.
"No."
I looked at her.
"Move."
She didn't.
"Elena, your mother would never ask you to walk toward her without knowing the danger."
My eyes stayed on the woman.
The woman who looked exactly like my mother.
"What are you saying?"
Marianne swallowed.
"Your mother had a twin."
The world went silent.
I stared at her.
"No."
Marianne nodded slowly.
"Yes."
The woman in the doorway smiled sadly.
"She always told you that she was the only one left."
My hands started shaking.
Because that sentence was something my mother would say.
A private sentence.
Something from childhood.
Something nobody else should know.
The woman stepped closer.
"Remember the summer by the lake?"
My breath caught.
I did.
I was eight years old.
My mother and I had rented a small cabin for three days.
No television.
No phones.
Just us.
She had taught me how to skip stones.
She had burned pancakes every morning.
She had laughed when I told her they tasted better than restaurant food.
Nobody knew that.
Nobody.
"Mom..."
I whispered.
The woman's eyes softened.
"I looked for you every day."
Adrian moved between us.
"Stop."
The woman looked at him.
Her expression changed.
The warmth disappeared.
"You always were good at pretending to be the hero."
Adrian's face hardened.
"And you always were good at hiding behind someone else's face."
My stomach dropped.
I looked at him.
"What does that mean?"
Neither answered.
The woman walked into the morgue.
Slowly.
Confidently.
Like she owned the room.
Maybe she did.
After all, this was the Hawthorne Estate.
Everyone here belonged to someone powerful.
Except me.
I was just the woman holding a mop when a dead man breathed.
The woman stopped beside the coffin.
She looked down at Adrian.
"You should have stayed buried."
Adrian laughed quietly.
A bitter sound.
"You should have made sure I was actually dead."
I looked between them.
"What happened twelve years ago?"
The woman looked at me.
And for a moment, she looked genuinely sad.
"Your mother was too stubborn."
My stomach tightened.
"Don't talk about her like that."
The woman smiled.
"She was exactly like you."
I froze.
"What?"
"Always asking questions."
She stepped closer.
"Always believing people deserved the truth."
The words sounded almost affectionate.
Almost.
Then her face changed.
"And that was what got her killed."
Adrian immediately looked at her.
"Careful."
The woman ignored him.
"Your mother discovered what this family was doing."
"What were they doing?"
She looked around the morgue.
At the coffins.
At the cold walls.
At the place where Adrian had almost been buried alive.
"Making people disappear."
The room became colder.
I looked at Adrian.
"Who were the people?"
He looked away.
The woman answered.
"People who knew too much."
My fingers closed around the silver key.
The key my mother left.
The key that started everything.
The woman noticed.
Her eyes moved to it.
And something changed.
Fear.
Real fear.
"Where did you get that?"
I stepped back.
"Why?"
She didn't answer.
Instead, she looked at Marianne.
"You gave it to her?"
Marianne shook her head.
"No."
The woman looked at Adrian.
"You?"
Adrian remained silent.
That was enough.
The woman's expression darkened.
"He remembered."
I frowned.
"What does that mean?"
Adrian looked at me.
"Elena..."
Before he could continue, the morgue lights flickered.
The hidden cameras turned toward us.
One by one.
Click.
Click.
Click.
Someone was activating them.
The woman looked upward.
"They're watching."
Marianne pulled out her device again.
"The entire estate is locked down."
I looked at her.
"Who are they?"
Nobody answered.
Then every screen in the morgue turned on.
There were dozens.
Security cameras.
Hallways.
Rooms.
The entire estate.
And in every single screen...
There was the same image.
My bedroom.
The small room I rented in town.
The room where I kept my mother's old photographs.
The room where I slept.
Someone had been watching me.
For months.
A message appeared across all the screens.
BLACK TEXT.
WHITE BACKGROUND.
Four words.
SHE FOUND THE KEY.
The woman beside me whispered:
"No."
Adrian looked at me.
"They know."
The screens changed.
A new image appeared.
An old photograph.
A photograph I had never seen before.
It showed my mother.
Adrian.
Marianne.
And another person standing between them.
A man.
Older.
Powerful.
The head of the Hawthorne family.
But that wasn't what made me freeze.
It was the child standing in front of them.
A little girl.
About five years old.
With blonde hair.
Holding my mother's hand.
The girl looked exactly like me.
The woman wearing my mother's face stepped closer to the screen.
And whispered:
"Elena..."
Her voice trembled.
"That's you."
I stared at the photograph.
Because she was right.
But I had never seen that moment.
I had no memory of it.
No memory of the day.
No memory of the people.
No memory of why my mother had been hiding the truth.
Then the screen zoomed in.
On the back of the photograph.
A message appeared.
May you like
Written in my mother's handwriting.
The real Elena Carter is not the girl they think she is.
