Chapter 5 - The Woman in the Hospital Photograph
Marcus vanished before my men reached the catwalk.
By sunrise, every property he owned was empty.
His accounts had been drained.
His phone was dead.
A guilty man running.
Or a man who knew he had been framed.
I refused to decide until I had proof.
Raymond survived surgery.
Noah returned home.
But he would only sleep if Elena sat beside him.
I watched from the doorway as she sang Hannah's song.
There was something almost unbearable about it.
Later, Elena joined me downstairs.
"You're staring at me again."
"You're singing my wife's song."
"My mother taught it to me."
"Why?"
"I don't know."
"Elena."
"I'm telling you the truth."
I believed she believed it.
That wasn't the same thing.
We reviewed Raymond's flash drive.
It contained photographs from St. Catherine's.
One stopped me.
Hannah lay in the trauma room.
A woman stood beside her.
Elena's mother.
But there was another woman reflected in the glass.
Young.
Dark hair.
Brown eyes.
Elena stared.
"That's me."
"What?"
"I was there."
She stepped backward.
"No."
"You're sure?"
"I was nineteen."
"Why were you at the hospital?"
"I don't remember."
I studied her.
"You don't remember being in the room with my dying wife?"
"I wasn't in the room."
"The photograph says otherwise."
Her breathing changed.
Then she touched her temple.
"My mother told me I waited downstairs."
"She lied."
Elena began crying.
Quietly.
"I don't know why."
We enlarged the image.
Something was in nineteen-year-old Elena's hands.
A baby blanket.
Noah's baby blanket.
I recognized the embroidered N.
"What were you doing with that?"
"I don't know."
Then Noah entered.
He looked at the screen.
At Elena.
At Hannah.
And said:
"Aunt Ellie."
Elena went completely still.
"What did you call her?" I asked.
Noah pointed at Elena.
"Aunt Ellie."
"Who taught you that?"
"Mama."
Elena covered her mouth.
I felt the world shift.
Hannah had known Elena before the hospital.
Much earlier.
"Elena."
She shook her head.
"I swear."
Then her phone rang.
Unknown number.
She answered.
A woman's voice said:
"Elena, your mother lied to you about who your father was."
The call ended.
A photograph arrived.
Two young women stood together twenty-eight years earlier.
One was Elena's mother.
The other was Hannah's mother.
Between them stood my father.
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And on the back someone had written:
ASK PRESTON WHO HIS FATHER REALLY WAS.
