Chapter 3: The Woman in the Photograph
The woman in the photograph had June's eyes exactly.
Not similar.
Not close.
Identical — the same slight downward tilt at the outer corners, the same dark ring around the iris that June had always called her one unusual feature.
My mouth opened.
Nothing came out.
"Her name was Diane," Vanessa said.
She had risen from her seat without me noticing.
She was standing beside me now, her voice low.
"Diane Calloway.
She was twenty-six when she came to me."
"How did you know her?"
"She worked at the clinic where Marcus used to—" Vanessa stopped.
Steadied herself.
"Where Marcus used to conduct his research.
She was a lab technician.
Smart.
Quiet.
She trusted the wrong person."
The guests had not moved.
Three hundred people sat in absolute silence, watching this happen in real time at what was supposed to be a wedding.
I didn't care.
I couldn't.
"She trusted Marcus," I said.
Vanessa nodded once.
"She was already three months along when she found out what he really was." Vanessa's jaw tightened.
"By then she had seen enough to know he would never let those children exist.
Not if they could be used as evidence against him."
"Evidence of what?"
Claire stepped down from the stage.
She was still holding the letter, but she reached into the envelope again and drew out a second sheet — thinner, older, the paper almost translucent with age.
"Diane wrote this one first," Claire said.
"Before she wrote the one addressed to you."
She handed it to me.
The handwriting was different.
Smaller.
More careful, like someone writing in a hurry but trying not to show it.
*If something happens to me, the research files are in the deposit box at First Meridian Bank, branch on Colton Street.
Account number 7741-B.
The key is with Vanessa.
She knows what to do.*
I looked up at Vanessa.
"You've had a key this whole time."
"I've had it for twenty-one years," she said.
"I was too afraid to use it."
"Afraid of what?
Diane was gone.
Marcus was—" I stopped.
"Where is Marcus?"
The silence that followed was a different kind of silence.
Vanessa didn't answer immediately.
She looked at June, then at Ava, then at Claire.
Some wordless exchange passed between the four of them — something they had already discussed, already decided, already prepared for.
"Marcus isn't gone," Vanessa said quietly.
"He's been watching this family for years."
The air left my chest.
"He knew about the girls?"
"He found out eight years ago.
He's known where you live since then." Her voice dropped further.
"He's known about the wedding for four months."
I turned without thinking and looked at the doors at the back of the hall.
May you like
Both of them were closed.
The security guard who had been standing at the left door was no longer there.
