Chapter 12 - The Missing Girl
Rachel walked out of Margaret’s hospital room and found Daniel sitting beside Lily.
Lily was asleep against his chest.
Three years old.
Exactly three.
Which meant Margaret had not been talking about Lily at all.
Rachel went back into the room.
“Who is Maya?”
Margaret closed her eyes.
“Claire’s first daughter.”
“The baby born the same night as Sophie?”
“Yes.”
“Where is she?”
“I don’t know.”
Rachel nearly shouted. “You helped Claire get a DNA test and then somehow lost the other child?”
“We never found her. The child Claire took home from St. Vincent’s disappeared from the records before she was six months old.”
“Disappeared how?”
“New birth certificate. New name. Somebody erased the trail.”
Rachel stared through the glass at Lily.
“And Lily?”
Margaret’s voice softened.
“Lily is Claire and Daniel’s daughter. Her age is real. Her birth certificate is real.”
Rachel felt an unexpected wave of relief for Daniel, followed immediately by another question.
“Then why hide evidence in Sophie’s rabbit instead of Lily’s things?”
“Because Claire believed Victor would always watch his own bloodline.”
Daniel entered.
“What are you talking about?”
Rachel told him about Maya.
He sat down slowly.
“Claire never told me she had another child.”
Margaret looked ashamed.
“She told almost nobody.”
Daniel stared through the glass at Lily sleeping in the chair outside.
“So Lily really is mine?”
“Yes.”
His face broke with relief.
Then Rachel asked the question that destroyed it.
“If Maya is still alive, who has been raising her for eight years?”
Margaret whispered, “That’s what Claire came back to find out.”
Rachel’s phone buzzed.
Unknown number.
A photograph appeared.
A woman standing outside St. Vincent’s Hospital that morning.
Dark hair.
Older than in the video.
Alive.
Claire.
Under the photograph:
SHE CAME BACK FOR SOPHIE.
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