Chapter 2: Everything You Know Was a Lie
Claire's voice didn't waver as she read.
"Dear Rick, if you're holding this, it means I wasn't strong enough to tell you myself.
The girls were never mine to keep.
I was only the carrier.
Their mother — their real mother — begged me to protect them.
She was dying, Rick.
And she was afraid of what Marcus would do if he found out they survived."
The room didn't breathe.
I looked at Vanessa.
Her hands were shaking in her lap.
"You were a surrogate?" I said.
The word barely made it out of my mouth.
"I tried to tell you that morning," she whispered.
"But Marcus found out she had contacted me.
He said if I stayed, he would—"
She stopped.
"He would what, Vanessa?"
She looked at her hands.
"He said the girls would disappear.
All three of them."
My legs went weak.
Twenty years.
I had spent twenty years angry at the wrong person.
"Then who—" I started.
Ava stepped forward and held up a photograph.
An old photograph.
A woman I had never seen before.
But June had gone completely still.
"Uncle Rick," she said quietly.
"Look at her eyes."
I looked.
And I felt the floor drop out from under me.
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What Rick saw in that photograph shattered everything he believed about his family.
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