She received notice that morning through an old mailing address connected to the trust.
She hadn’t really come for Brielle’s birthday.
She came because she knew that once I discovered the trust, everything she had done would begin unraveling.
The twenty-seven-thousand-dollar party deposit was simply the last theft she hoped to complete before disappearing.
I thought that was the final secret.
It wasn’t.
Six months after Clara’s birth, Thomas called me.
“Natalie, there’s something else.”
My stomach dropped.
By then, I had learned to fear those words.
“What?”
“We finished reviewing Eleanor’s records.”
Grant sat beside me on the couch.
Clara was asleep upstairs.
Thomas continued.
“The trust documents contain a sealed letter.”
“For me?”
“Yes.”
“From my mother?”
A pause.
“No.”
I frowned.
“Then who?”
Thomas’s voice changed.
“From Diane.”
I stopped breathing.
“What?”
“The letter was written before Eleanor died.”
That made no sense.
