“What?”
She took the picture, staring at it with widening eyes.
“I know this woman.”
“From where?”
Rachel looked at Thomas, but he lowered his gaze.
“Tell him,” she said.
Thomas said nothing.
“Tell me what?” I demanded.
Rachel turned the photograph over.
“Her name was Evelyn.”
“That means nothing to me.”
“It should.”
Her eyes filled with an emotion I could not identify—fear, sorrow, and something close to relief.
“Evelyn was our mother’s youngest sister.”
I stared at her.
“Claire’s aunt?”
Rachel nodded.
“She disappeared when Claire was a child. Our family was told she had died.”
The room went silent.
Emma moved closer to me.
I looked again at the young girl in the photograph—the first child who had carried my daughter’s name.
“Then Lily was Claire’s cousin,” I said.
Thomas raised his eyes.
“No.”
The single word changed the air in the room.
Rachel went still.
Thomas looked at Emma, then at me.
“Lily was not Claire’s cousin.”
