I stared at her.
“Carl told me he lived alone.”
“He did.”
“He said he had no children.”
Anna’s smile faded.
“He believed I d/i/ed when I was six.”
Nothing in this family was ever simple.
Daniel asked Anna to sit down. She refused.
“I’ve spent twenty-two years trying to find him. I’m not sitting until someone tells me why my father’s email sent me here.”
She handed me her phone.
The message contained only three lines.
Anna, I was wrong. You survived.
Go to Vale House and find Claire.
She will bring you home.
I looked at Daniel.
“Did you know?”
“No.”
Thomas studied Anna’s face.
“Who raised you?”
“A woman named Margaret Cole.”
The name struck all of us.
The false identity Lenora had used to remove Evelyn from the Canadian clinic.
Anna explained that when she was six, she had been traveling with her mother, Sophie, when their car crashed during a winter storm. Sophie d/i/ed. Anna survived but lost much of her memory.
