Chapter 9
A year passed.
Chloe turned five. She started kindergarten. She made the soccer team. She still talked to the sunflowers every morning before school, telling them about her day, her friends, the art projects she was working on. She was smart and funny and stubborn and kind—Allison through and through.
Hale Designs was thriving. The senior team had expanded into San Antonio and Dallas. They'd won three major industry awards. They kept Allison's office exactly as she'd left it—sunflowers on the desk, her favorite coffee mug in the cabinet, Chloe's artwork taped to the walls.
I was busier than I'd ever been. Running the trust. Sitting on the board of a domestic violence shelter we'd founded in Allison's name. Volunteering at Chloe's school. Training for my fourth marathon. I was sixty-three years old, and I felt more alive than I had in decades.
But there was still one thing missing. One last loose end.
Allison's journal—the one we'd found in the waterproof box in the sunflower circle—had ended abruptly on August 12th, two days before she died. The last entry was only half-written:
*"I found something today. Something worse than the affair. Worse than the money. Derek isn't who he says he is. His real name isn't even Derek Lawson. He's been lying about everything since the day we met. If I'm right... Chloe isn't safe. None of us are. I have to—"*
The rest of the page was torn out.
I'd never been able to figure out what she'd found. Who Derek really was. What secret was so terrible that it was worse than murder for hire. Detective Marquez had run his real name through every database she could find. Derek James Lawson. Born in Fort Worth. Graduated from UT Austin. Clean record before Allison's death. No aliases. No second identities. Nothing.
I'd almost given up.
Then, on the anniversary of Allison's death, I was cleaning out the attic—something I'd been avoiding for a year—when I found it.
A cardboard box labeled "CHLOE'S BABY THINGS."
Inside, along with the tiny onesies and the first shoes and the blanket she'd come home from the hospital in, was a stack of greeting cards. Baby shower cards. Birthday cards. Cards from friends and family.
And at the bottom of the stack, a card I'd never seen before.
It was a simple white card, no signature on the front. Inside, typed in a plain, generic font:
*"Congratulations on your new daughter, Allison. You always did have terrible taste in men. Enjoy the next five years. They'll be the last ones you get. — D."*
The postmark was five years ago, the week Chloe was born.
Derek had threatened her five years ago. Long before the affair. Long before the insurance policy. Long before the murder.
He'd never loved her. He'd never even liked her. He'd married her for a reason. And whatever that reason was, it had been there from the very beginning.
I took the card to Detective Marquez. She sent it to the lab for DNA and fingerprints. Two weeks later, she called me.
"We got a hit," she said. "A partial fingerprint on the envelope. It didn't match Derek. But it matched someone else in the system. A man named Marcus Thorne. Currently serving a life sentence in Florida for armed robbery and attempted murder. He's Derek's older brother."
"Older brother?" I said. "Derek said he was an only child."
"That's not all. We pulled Marcus's file. He was the prime suspect in a 2003 double homicide in Fort Worth. A wealthy couple, the Hendersons, found dead in their home. Their seventeen-year-old daughter, Sarah, was missing. Never found. The case went cold. But Marcus was seen leaving the house that night. And with him? His sixteen-year-old little brother. Derek Thorne."
My blood ran cold.
"Derek Thorne," I whispered.
"Changed his name to Lawson when he turned eighteen. Got a fake ID. Faked his entire past. Moved to Austin. Laid low for five years. Then he met Allison. Rich. Beautiful. Successful. No living father. A trusting mother. The perfect mark."
"And the daughter who was never found?" I said. "Sarah Henderson?"
"We found her. Sort of. She died in a car accident in California in 2008. But before she died, she had a daughter. Born in 2004. Put up for adoption. Closed records. But we got a court order. Evelyn... the little girl's birth date is the same as Chloe's. Same hospital in Fort Worth. Same doctor."
The room spun.
"Chloe isn't Derek's daughter, is she?" I said.
"No," Marquez said gently. "We ran a DNA test on the hairbrush you sent over. Chloe is Sarah Henderson's biological daughter. Derek and Marcus stole her from the hospital when she was two days old. They gave her to Allison, told her she was Derek's biological child from a one-night stand, that the mother had died in childbirth. Allison adopted her legally, never suspecting a thing. Derek was just waiting for the right time to kill Allison and disappear with Chloe. To sell her back to the Hendersons' surviving family for a ransom. Five million dollars. That's what the text messages were really about, Evelyn. The insurance money was just a down payment. Chloe was the real prize."
I sat down hard. My legs wouldn't hold me.
Allison had known. In those last two days, she'd found out. She'd found out Chloe wasn't Derek's. She'd found out who he really was. She'd found out he was planning to sell her own daughter to strangers.
That's why she'd fought so hard. That's why she'd hidden all the evidence. That's why she'd died.
She wasn't just protecting herself. She was protecting Chloe. From a monster who had stolen her as a baby and planned to sell her for profit.
"Does Chloe have any family?" I asked, my voice barely a whisper. "The Hendersons? Any aunts or uncles or grandparents who might want her?"
"There's a great-aunt in Maine. Seventy-eight years old. She was notified. She said... she said Chloe already has a family. A grandmother who loves her more than anything. A home. A life. She doesn't want to disrupt that. She just wants to meet her someday. When Chloe is old enough to understand."
May you like
I cried then. For Allison, who had loved a stolen baby as her own. For Chloe, who had been taken from one family and given to another, and who had lost the only mother she'd ever known. For the terrible, twisted secret that had been hanging over all of us for five years.
But mostly, I cried because I was grateful. Grateful that Derek was in a cell in Colorado where he could never hurt her. Grateful that Vanessa was in Gatesville. Grateful that Chloe was mine. Safe. Loved. Home.
