PART 5 — THE DAUGHTER FAIRVIEW HID
Dr. Malcolm Voss was still pounding on the bank’s glass doors when the security lights turned red.
Patricia Long hurried toward the alarm panel.
“Do not open that door,” Mr. Cole ordered.
“There is a woman in his car,” I said.
“And we do not know whether either of them is dangerous.”
“That woman may be my daughter.”
The words sounded impossible even after I said them.
My daughter.
Alive.
Sitting less than thirty feet away from me.
Rosalind moved beside the security monitor.
The woman in the passenger seat had not moved.
Her head remained against the window, her dark hair covering part of her face.
Dr. Voss struck the glass again.
Then he pointed toward the car and mouthed one word.
Please.
Mr. Cole spoke into his phone.
Two officers stationed outside approached Dr. Voss with their weapons drawn.
He immediately raised his hands.
The blood on his shirt had dried almost black.
One officer searched him while the other opened the passenger door.
The woman inside stirred.
Her face lifted.
Even through the monitor, I saw the shape of her eyes.
My eyes.
The same slight downward turn at the outer corners.
The same eyes Walter had spent fifty-one years telling me could make a person confess before I asked a question.
The officer helped her from the car.
She stood unsteadily.
Dr. Voss tried to move toward her.
The police forced him against the wall.
“She has been drugged,” he shouted through the glass. “Curtis injected her!”
Rosalind looked at me.
“The medication from Bridget’s trunk.”
Mr. Cole ordered Patricia to unlock the entrance.
The officers brought Dr. Voss inside first.
He was placed on his knees with his hands behind his head.
Then the woman entered.
She wore black trousers, one torn stocking and a cream-colored sweater stained at the shoulder.
She was not young.
She was fifty-seven years old if Walter’s ledger was correct.
But when she looked at me, I saw the baby I had never held.
I saw the little girl Walter had watched riding a bicycle from across the street.
I saw every birthday I had mourned beside an empty grave.
The woman stopped walking.
Her lips parted.
“Eleanor?”
My knees weakened.
Rosalind caught my elbow.
I gripped my walker.
“You know me?”
The woman looked as if she had forgotten how to breathe.
“I have seen your photograph.”
“Where?”
“In my mother’s things.”
My heart twisted at the word mother.
“Lillian Vale?”
She nodded.
“My mother told me you were dead.”
Nobody in the bank moved.
I stared at her.
“She told you I was dead?”
“She said you died after giving birth.”
“I did not.”
“I know that now.”
The woman pressed one hand against her temple.
Her balance shifted.
An officer guided her into a chair.
Dr. Voss tried to stand.
“Naomi needs medical attention.”
Mr. Cole pushed him back down.
“You will remain where you are until you explain the blood on your clothes.”
“It belongs to Curtis.”
That brought every face toward him.
“You encountered Curtis after the crash?” Mr. Cole asked.
“He came to our house.”
Naomi closed her eyes.
Dr. Voss continued.
“He was waiting inside when we returned from dinner. He had a key.”
“Where did he get it?”
“I do not know.”
I did.
Bridget’s car contained keys to six widows’ homes.
Curtis and his wife had probably collected more keys than most locksmiths.
“What did Curtis want?” Mr. Cole asked.
“The original birth certificate.”
Naomi opened her eyes.
“You told me it had been destroyed.”
Dr. Voss lowered his head.
“I lied.”
Naomi stared at her husband.
“You said there was no original.”
“I was trying to protect you.”
“Do not use that word.”
Her voice was weak, but it cut through the room.
“Everyone who has lied to me says it was protection.”
I almost laughed.
Not because anything was funny.
Because she sounded exactly like me.
Dr. Voss looked toward Naomi.
“Curtis knew where I kept it. He opened the safe before we arrived.”
“Why did you have my birth certificate?”
“It was not only yours.”
“What does that mean?”
Dr. Voss did not answer.
Naomi struggled to stand.
“What else was in the safe?”
“Sit down,” he said.
“You do not get to tell me what to do.”
She stood.
Her knees nearly failed, but she held the back of the chair.
“What did Curtis take?”
“The certificate, your adoption record and a list of payments made to Lillian.”
My fingers tightened around my walker.
“Payments from whom?”
Dr. Voss looked at me.
“Families who received children from the hospital.”
“Received?”
Rosalind’s voice sharpened.
“You mean bought.”
Dr. Voss closed his eyes.
“Yes.”
The word filled the bank like smoke.
Naomi looked at me.
For the first time, there was no confusion in her face.
Only horror.
“My mother sold babies?”
“Lillian did not work alone,” Dr. Voss said.
“You knew?”
“Not when we met.”
“But you learned.”
“Yes.”
“When?”
“Eleven years ago.”
Naomi stepped away from the chair.
“You have known for eleven years?”
“I found records after Lillian disappeared.”
“She died.”
“No.”
Naomi froze.
I felt Rosalind’s hand close around mine.
“What did you say?” Naomi whispered.
Dr. Voss finally looked at his wife.
“Lillian Vale is alive.”
Naomi’s hand slipped from the chair.
The officer caught her before she fell.
“No.”
“She did not die in that boating accident.”
“There was a funeral.”
“There was an empty coffin.”
The words struck me with terrible familiarity.
My daughter and I had both mourned empty coffins.
“She left because investigators were getting close to the hospital records,” Dr. Voss said. “She transferred her property, emptied several accounts and disappeared.”
“Where is she?”
“I do not know.”
Naomi slapped him.
The sound echoed across the marble floor.
The officers moved forward, but Mr. Cole raised one hand.
Dr. Voss did not react.
He remained on his knees.
“You let me bury her,” Naomi said.
“I thought knowing she was alive would put you in danger.”
“There is that word again.”
“I loved you.”
“You loved me enough to lie every morning for eleven years.”
Dr. Voss lowered his eyes.
Naomi turned away from him.
Then she looked at me.
She studied my face slowly, as though searching for something she had been missing all her life.
“My name is not Naomi, is it?”
My throat closed.
“Walter called you Rebecca.”
Her eyes filled.
“Rebecca.”
I nodded.
“We named you after my grandmother.”
She repeated it quietly.
“Rebecca.”
I had imagined saying my daughter’s name again thousands of times.
At the cemetery.
In dreams.
During sleepless nights when grief made strange bargains with hope.
But I had never imagined she would be standing in front of me, older than I had been when I lost her.
“I do not expect you to call me Mother,” I said.
Naomi looked down.
“I do not know what to call you.”
“Eleanor will do.”
She looked at me again.
“What did you call me?”
“When?”
“When I was born.”
My breath caught.
I had been weak from blood loss.
A nurse had held a blanket near my face for only a few seconds.
I had seen one tiny cheek.
A closed fist.
A dark curl above her ear.
“Becca,” I whispered. “I called you Becca.”
Naomi covered her mouth.
A small sound escaped her.
Then she crossed the distance between us.
She did not embrace me.
Not yet.
She touched my face with two fingers.
I stayed completely still.
“You are real,” she said.
“So are you.”
Her hand trembled.
Then she stepped back.
Dr. Voss remained on the floor behind her.
Mr. Cole crouched in front of him.
“You will now explain Fairview.”
Dr. Voss glanced at Naomi.
“Fairview began as a private recovery home.”
“For whom?” Rosalind asked.
“Women who had difficult pregnancies, nervous exhaustion or what doctors used to call emotional instability.”
“In other words,” I said, “women nobody believed.”
He nodded.
“The original building was owned by St. Agnes Hospital. When the maternity wing closed, several administrators purchased it through a private company.”
“Including Lillian?” Mr. Cole asked.
“Yes.”
“What did they use it for?”
“At first, record storage. Later, elder care.”
“And stolen infants?” I asked.
Dr. Voss hesitated.
Mr. Cole leaned closer.
“Answer her.”
“Some mothers were transferred there after giving birth. They were heavily medicated. They were told their babies had died or been placed temporarily with foster families.”
“And the babies?” Naomi asked.
“They were given new identities.”
Naomi turned away.
Her shoulders shook.
“Lillian raised me in that house.”
Dr. Voss nodded.
“You spent your first three years in the eastern residential wing.”
“I remember a long hallway.”
“The wing was closed after an electrical fire.”
“I remember red doors.”
“There were red doors.”
Naomi looked sick.
“I thought it was a dream.”
“It was not.”
She turned toward him.
“You said Fairview was only where my mother worked.”
“That is what Lillian instructed me to tell you.”
“And you obeyed her after she disappeared?”
“I was afraid of what the truth would do to you.”
Naomi looked at me.
“The truth does not destroy people.”
I understood exactly what she meant.
“The people hiding it do,” I said.
Mr. Cole opened Walter’s ledger.
“How did Fairview become connected to the property scheme?”
Dr. Voss took a long breath.
“The facility was losing money. Insurance reimbursements decreased. The private owners had debts. Lillian developed a transition program.”
“Hearthstone,” Mr. Cole said.
“Yes.”
“Hearthstone Transition Services identified elderly homeowners,” Rosalind said. “Then Fairview declared them incompetent and took their property.”
“At first, Hearthstone was legitimate,” Dr. Voss said.
“That is what criminals always say about the first year.”
“It helped families sell homes, arrange care and pay facility bills.”
“When did it change?”
“When Denise Martin became director of admissions.”
Bridget’s sister.
The woman they were both afraid of.
“Where did Denise come from?” Mr. Cole asked.
Dr. Voss looked toward Naomi.
Naomi shook her head.
“Do not protect me again.”
He swallowed.
“Denise is Lillian Vale’s biological daughter.”
Naomi stared at him.
“My sister?”
“Half sister.”
The room became silent.
“Lillian had another child?”
“Before you.”
“And she kept Denise.”
Dr. Voss did not answer.
Naomi laughed softly.
There was no humor in it.
“She stole me from my mother, but she kept her own daughter.”
“Denise was raised by Lillian’s sister. She did not learn who her biological mother was until she was an adult.”
“When did I meet her?”
“You knew her as Denise Martin.”
Naomi stepped backward.
“She worked in our house.”
“She was Lillian’s assistant.”
“She called herself my cousin.”
“She is your half sister.”
Naomi pressed both hands against the sides of her head.
Rosalind guided her back to the chair.
Mr. Cole continued questioning Dr. Voss.
“Denise revived Hearthstone?”
“Yes. She recruited Bridget. Bridget approached families through churches, community groups and medical screenings.”
“And Curtis?”
“He was in debt.”
“How much?”
“Nearly three hundred thousand dollars.”
I stared at him.
Curtis repaired swimming pools.
How could he owe that much?
Dr. Voss answered before I asked.
“Gambling, business loans and money he had taken from his father’s company.”
Walter’s stolen one hundred and eighty-six thousand dollars had not been enough.
Nothing had ever been enough for Curtis.
“Denise knew about Walter’s recording,” Dr. Voss continued. “She knew Curtis had searched for it. She offered to protect him from exposure if he helped identify homeowners.”
“So my son sold women to Fairview to hide what he did to his father,” I said.
“At first, he only provided information.”
Rosalind laughed sharply.
“Then he graduated to kidnapping.”
Dr. Voss looked toward her bruised wrist.
“I am sorry.”
“You signed the order.”
His face changed.
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Denise threatened Naomi.”
Naomi’s head lifted.
“Do not blame me.”
“She had the original birth records. She said she would destroy them and report you for inheritance fraud.”
“What inheritance?”
“Fairview.”
Naomi stood again.
“I do not own Fairview.”
“Yes, you do.”
Dr. Voss’s voice was barely above a whisper.
“Lillian transferred her controlling shares to you before she disappeared.”
Naomi stared at him.
“That is impossible.”
“The documents were placed in a trust.”
“You told me the foundation owned Fairview.”
“The foundation is controlled by your trust.”
Naomi looked around the bank as if the walls had moved.
“I own the place where they imprisoned Rosalind?”
“You did not know.”
“Did I profit from it?”
“The distributions went into accounts I managed.”
“Did I profit from it?”
“Yes.”
Naomi closed her eyes.
“How much?”
“Approximately four million dollars over eleven years.”
I watched my daughter absorb the knowledge that the life she had lived had been financed by stolen homes.
She did not cry.
She looked at Dr. Voss.
“Where is the money?”
“Invested.”
“Freeze it.”
“Naomi—”
“Freeze every account. Sell everything that can legally be sold. Repay every family.”
“It is not that simple.”
“It never is when the money belongs to someone else.”
Again, she sounded like me.
Mr. Cole stood.
“We can obtain orders freezing the assets. But first, I need evidence connecting Denise, Bridget and Curtis to the recent guardianship petitions.”
Dr. Voss nodded toward the recorder.
“Walter’s tape proves Curtis had contact with Lillian.”
“Fourteen years ago.”
“There are newer recordings.”
“Where?”
“Fairview.”
The red security lights reflected across his face.
“Denise records every intake meeting.”
“Why?”
“Leverage. She keeps videos of families lying about relatives’ medical conditions. She records doctors approving petitions. She records guardians discussing property sales.”
“Where are the recordings stored?”
“In a room beneath the old chapel.”
Naomi looked at him.
“There is no room beneath the chapel.”
“There is.”
“I played there as a child.”
“The entrance is behind the altar.”
She closed her eyes again.
“The red door.”
Dr. Voss nodded.
“The red door leads to a stairway.”
Naomi had remembered it all her life.
Not a dream.
A hidden room.
A place beneath Fairview where records of stolen children and stolen homes had been kept for decades.
Mr. Cole called his unit.
He ordered officers to secure every entrance to Fairview and prevent staff from removing documents.
Dr. Voss lifted his head.
“That may already be too late.”
“Why?”
“Curtis took Naomi’s birth certificate for Denise.”
“I thought you said Curtis escaped.”
“He did.”
“So Denise arranged the crash?”
“I believe so.”
“Where would they go?”
“The chapel.”
Mr. Cole turned toward the officers.
“We leave now.”
Naomi moved toward the door.
“I am coming.”
“No,” Dr. Voss said.
She did not even look at him.
Mr. Cole blocked her path.
“You have been drugged and assaulted.”
“I own the facility.”
“That does not make it safe.”
“It makes me responsible.”
“It makes you a witness.”
“It makes me the only person here who remembers that building before it became Fairview.”
Mr. Cole looked at me.
I do not know why.
Perhaps he expected me to tell her to remain behind.
“I am coming too,” I said.
“Mrs. Hale—”
“My daughter was hidden in that building. My friend was drugged there. My son may have murdered my husband to protect what is inside it.”
“You cannot enter an active crime scene.”
“Then arrest me at the door.”
Rosalind picked up her purse.
“And me.”
“You need a hospital.”
“I will go after I help send the people responsible there.”
Ronnie raised one hand.
“I assume telling all three of them no will not work.”
Mr. Cole rubbed his forehead.
“You are not entering until officers clear the building.”
“That is a sentence I can accept,” I said.
Patricia approached from the conference-room telephone.
“Mr. Cole, central records returned your request.”
She held several printed photographs.
“The bank still had the security images from the day Walter Hale’s box was accessed.”
Mr. Cole took them.
I moved beside him.
The first image showed the bank lobby fourteen years earlier.
Curtis stood near the vault entrance.
He was younger and thinner, but there was no doubt it was him.
A woman stood beside him.
She wore dark glasses and a scarf over her hair.
“Denise?” Rosalind asked.
Dr. Voss shook his head.
“No.”
He looked terrified.
“That is Lillian.”
Naomi grabbed the photograph.
“My mother was with Curtis the day before Walter died?”
Dr. Voss stared at the image.
“I did not know.”
The second photograph showed Curtis and Lillian leaving the vault corridor.
Curtis carried nothing.
Lillian held a brown envelope.
The third photograph was taken near the side exit.
Lillian’s scarf had slipped.
Naomi touched the image.
“She looks younger than I remember.”
“She was younger,” I said.
Naomi shook her head.
“No. This was fourteen years ago. She looked older than this when I was a child.”
Mr. Cole examined the date.
“The timestamp is correct.”
Dr. Voss took the photograph.
His face turned white.
“That is not Lillian.”
“You just said it was,” Rosalind replied.
“I was wrong.”
He looked at Naomi.
“That woman is Denise.”
Naomi stared at the picture.
Her half sister had dressed as their mother to enter Walter’s safe-deposit box.
“Why?” I asked.
Dr. Voss looked toward Walter’s recorder.
“Because the bank employee knew Lillian. Denise used her identity to access accounts and records.”
“How could she access Walter’s box?”
“She had his key.”
I remembered the recording.
Walter confronting Curtis.
Curtis telling someone on the telephone that Walter knew.
The woman he called Lillian might not have been Lillian at all.
It could have been Denise pretending to be her own mother.
“How long has Denise controlled Curtis?” I asked.
Dr. Voss shook his head.
“I do not know.”
Naomi studied the photograph.
“I do.”
She placed it beside the leather ledger.
“Denise was at Walter’s funeral.”
I looked at her.
“Were you there?”
“No. But she was.”
“How would you know?”
“After Lillian’s supposed death, I found a box of Denise’s photographs. One showed her standing outside a church.”
Naomi pointed at the image.
“She was wearing that coat.”
I remembered a woman at Walter’s funeral.
She had stood beneath the oak tree at the edge of the cemetery.
Dark glasses.
Black coat.
I thought she was one of Walter’s former employees.
She left before I could speak to her.
Denise had watched us bury Walter.
She had known exactly what Curtis had done.
Patricia’s telephone rang again.
She answered.
Her face tightened as she listened.
Then she held the receiver toward Mr. Cole.
“It is Fairview.”
Mr. Cole put the call on speaker.
“This is Adrian Cole with the State Elder Protection Unit. Identify yourself.”
For several seconds, nobody answered.
Then a woman laughed.
Naomi grabbed the edge of the table.
I recognized that laugh.
Not because I had heard it before.
Because it sounded like Bridget’s laugh without the false sweetness.
“Denise,” Dr. Voss whispered.
“Hello, Malcolm,” the woman said.
“Where is Curtis?” Mr. Cole asked.
“He is safe.”
“You are surrounded.”
“No. Fairview is surrounded. I am not at Fairview.”
Mr. Cole signaled an officer to trace the call.
“What do you want?”
“The ledger and the cassette.”
Naomi stepped closer to the telephone.
“You will get nothing.”
The woman became silent.
Then she said, “Hello, Rebecca.”
Naomi’s face hardened.
“My name is Naomi.”
“That is not what Walter called you.”
“You are not my sister.”
“We share a mother.”
“You helped her steal me.”
“I was four years old.”
Naomi’s expression changed.
Denise continued.
“I grew up watching Lillian mourn the daughter she kept pretending was hers.”
“You mean me?”
“She loved you more than she ever loved me.”
“She bought me.”
“She chose you.”
“She stole me.”
“She saved you from a mother who could not care for you.”
I moved toward the telephone.
“Put Lillian on the phone.”
Denise laughed again.
“Eleanor Hale.”
“You know who I am.”
“I have known who you are since I was a child.”
“Where is Lillian?”
A pause.
Then Denise said, “Would you like to ask her yourself?”
There was movement on the line.
A chair scraped.
Someone breathed near the receiver.
Then an old woman spoke.
“Eleanor?”
My body became rigid.
Walter’s recording had captured only a faint version of her voice.
But it was the same voice.
The woman Curtis called after poisoning his father.
Lillian Vale.
Alive.
“You stole my daughter,” I said.
“I saved her.”
“From what?”
“From you.”
Naomi reached for the telephone.
“Mother?”
Lillian began to cry.
“My little girl.”
Naomi’s fingers trembled.
“You let me believe you were dead.”
“I had to disappear.”
“You let me bury an empty coffin.”
“It was the only way to protect you.”
“Stop saying protect.”
Lillian became quiet.
Naomi looked at me.
Neither of us had planned the words.
We had spoken them exactly the same way.
Lillian heard it too.
“You sound like her,” she whispered.
“I should,” Naomi said. “She is my mother.”
The line went silent.
Then Lillian’s crying stopped.
When she spoke again, her voice was colder.
“Blood is not motherhood.”
“No,” I said. “But neither is kidnapping.”
“You were unstable.”
“I had nearly died giving birth.”
“You screamed that the doctors were trying to take your baby.”
“Because they were.”
Lillian did not answer.
Mr. Cole leaned toward the telephone.
“Ms. Vale, surrender yourself and release Curtis.”
Lillian laughed softly.
“Curtis does not need releasing.”
The bank became still.
“What does that mean?” I asked.
“He came willingly.”
Of course he had.
The crash.
The escape.
The attack at Dr. Voss’s home.
Curtis had not been running from Denise.
He had been running back to her.
Lillian continued.
“Bring Walter’s ledger and recording to the old St. Agnes maternity ward.”
“Fairview?” Mr. Cole asked.
“No. The original hospital.”
“St. Agnes was demolished,” Patricia said.
“Not all of it,” Lillian replied.
Dr. Voss looked toward Naomi.
“The underground passage.”
Naomi closed her eyes.
“The tunnel from Fairview.”
Lillian heard her.
“You remember.”
“I remember red doors.”
“You were never supposed to.”
“What is in the tunnel?”
“The beginning of your life.”
Mr. Cole shook his head at the officers.
Nobody was to agree to anything.
I stepped closer to the speaker.
“Why should we bring you the ledger?”
“Because Curtis has the original certificate.”
“That is not enough.”
“He also has Walter’s remaining evidence.”
“Walter said the evidence was in Samuel Green’s office.”
“And who do you think emptied that office after Samuel died?”
Denise’s voice returned.
“Bring the ledger before midnight.”
“What happens at midnight?” Rosalind asked.
“The maternity records burn.”
Mr. Cole signaled for the trace.
The officer shook his head.
Not enough time.
Naomi leaned over the telephone.
“If you destroy those records, you destroy the identities of every child you stole.”
Lillian spoke gently.
“No, Rebecca. I destroy the evidence that their mothers ever existed.”
The telephone disconnected.
Mr. Cole immediately began issuing orders.
Officers moved toward the entrance.
Patricia pulled up maps of the old St. Agnes property.
Dr. Voss tried to stand.
“Fairview was built beside the original hospital site. The basement levels connect.”
“Why did you not disclose that before?” Mr. Cole demanded.
“Because I believed the tunnel had been sealed.”
“You have believed many convenient things.”
Naomi stared at the dead telephone.
“I know how to enter it.”
Dr. Voss looked at her.
“No.”
“There was a room behind the chapel altar. Lillian took me there when I was little.”
“You were three.”
“I remember the smell.”
“What smell?” I asked.
Naomi turned toward me.
“Smoke.”
Rosalind opened Walter’s ledger.
“Lillian said the records will burn at midnight.”
Naomi shook her head.
“She has burned them before.”
Dr. Voss closed his eyes.
“The electrical fire.”
“It was not an electrical fire,” Naomi said. “I remember Lillian carrying boxes. I remember Denise crying. I remember a woman beating on a red door.”
My blood turned cold.
“What woman?”
“I do not know.”
“What was she saying?”
Naomi pressed both hands against her temples.
The drugs were making her memories come in fragments.
“She kept shouting a name.”
“Whose name?”
Naomi looked directly at me.
“Eleanor.”
Nobody moved.
“That is impossible,” I said. “I was never inside Fairview.”
“No,” Naomi whispered. “She was not calling for you.”
Her face changed as the memory returned.
“She was calling to someone named Eleanor who was locked in the room with her.”
Rosalind slowly turned a page in Walter’s ledger.
“Eleanor is not an uncommon name.”
“No,” Naomi said. “But I remember the other name too.”
“What other name?”
“The woman behind the door shouted, ‘Eleanor Hale, wake up.’”
My heart seemed to stop.
“I was home with Walter.”
Naomi looked frightened.
“She said Hale.”
Mr. Cole took the ledger from Rosalind and searched the oldest entries.
Near the back, several pages were stuck together.
He carefully separated them.
A photograph fell onto the table.
It showed two young women in hospital gowns standing behind a barred window.
One was Lillian Vale.
The other woman had my face.
Not similar.
Not close.
My exact face.
On the back, Walter had written a date from three months after Naomi’s birth.
Beneath it were six words.
Eleanor’s twin survived. They took her too.
I stared at the photograph.
My mother had always told me I was born alone.
My birth certificate listed one child.
Walter had never mentioned a sister.
But the woman in the photograph could have been me.
Naomi picked it up with shaking hands.
“If she was your twin…”
“She would be my age.”
Rosalind looked at me.
“And she may still be alive.”
Mr. Cole turned the photograph over again.
A second sentence was written beneath the first.
The ink had faded, but it was still readable.
Her name is Evelyn. She works for Lillian.
Dr. Voss made a sound behind us.
I turned.
He was staring at the photograph as if he had seen a ghost.
“You know her,” I said.
He did not answer.
Naomi moved toward him.
“Malcolm.”
His face collapsed.
“Evelyn is not working for Lillian.”
“Where is she?”
Dr. Voss looked toward the bank doors.
“She is the director of Fairview.”
Rosalind shook her head.
“Denise is the admissions director.”
“Not Denise.”
Dr. Voss swallowed.
“The woman everyone believes owns Fairview.”
Naomi stared at him.
“You said I owned it.”
“On paper.”
“Who actually controls it?”
Dr. Voss looked at me.
“Your sister.”
The lights inside the bank suddenly went out.
Red emergency lamps flashed once.
Then darkness swallowed the room.
Someone screamed.
Glass shattered near the side entrance.
An officer shouted for everyone to get down.
I felt Rosalind grab my arm.
Then a hand closed around my mouth.
A woman’s voice whispered beside my ear.
The voice sounded almost exactly like mine.
“Do not fight me, Eleanor.”
Something sharp pressed against my neck.
“I have waited seventy-eight years to meet my sister.”………………..
TO BE CONTINUED IN PART 6…
