“Who was her mother?”
Thomas hesitated.
Then he pointed toward the woman in the photograph.
“She worked at Westbridge.”
“As what?”
“A music teacher.”
I studied the woman’s face.
She had dark hair, a calm smile, and one hand resting protectively on the girl’s shoulder.
Something about her seemed familiar.
Not because I had met her, but because I had seen her features reflected in someone else.
The door behind us opened.
Rachel stepped into the room.
Emma stood beside her.
I rose sharply.
“You were supposed to stay at the apartment.”
“Emma remembered where she had seen the tree symbol,” Rachel said.
Emma held up her library book.
Embossed faintly beneath the dust jacket was the same seven-branched tree.
Thomas stared at the book.
“That should not exist.”
Emma opened it to the inside cover.
A library card pocket had been glued there. Behind it was a narrow strip of paper containing an address and a date.
Tomorrow’s date.
Beneath it were six handwritten words:
Bring Emma. She deserves her real name.
Rachel looked at the photograph in my hand.
Then she saw the woman standing beside the first Emma Carter.
Her breath caught.
“Daniel,” she whispered.
“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.”
He reached into his shirt pocket and removed a second photograph, worn soft at the edges.
It showed Claire several years before we met, holding the same little girl in her arms.
On the back, someone had written:
Claire and her daughter, Lily.
I could not breathe.
“That is impossible,” I said.
Thomas’s eyes were filled with quiet sorrow.
“Daniel, before Claire married you, she had a child.”
Emma’s fingers closed around mine.
The mystery of Westbridge was no longer only about stolen money, forged records, or a hidden scholarship.
Somewhere in the world, my wife’s first daughter might still be alive.
And tomorrow, someone expected us to meet her.
