Chapter 2: What Lily's Mother Left Behind
After Vanessa left, the house went quiet.
But Lily wouldn't stop shaking.
I held her on the couch for a long time before she finally looked up at me.
"Daddy…
she said if I told you, something bad would happen to you."
My chest tightened.
"Nothing is going to happen to me, sweetheart.
I promise."
That's when our housekeeper, Rosa, set the teddy bear on the coffee table.
She reached into a small tear along the back seam and pulled out a folded piece of paper.
It wasn't a note.
It was a document.
Legal.
Dated eight months ago.
I recognized the letterhead immediately.
It was from my attorney's office.
But I had never seen this document before in my life.
My name was on it.
So was Lily's.
And so was a signature I didn't recognize — until Rosa whispered the name out loud.
The moment she said it, Lily buried her face in my arm and started to cry again.
"Mommy gave it to me," Lily whispered.
"She said hide it.
She said don't let the pretty lady find it."
Lily's mother had known.
Before she p@ssed.
Before the accident.
Before any of this.
She had known — and she had hidden the proof inside her daughter's teddy bear.
My phone lit up on the table.
May you like
It was Vanessa.
And she was calling from a number I had never seen before.
