Chapter 5: Petra
The cottage sat at the far edge of the estate property, half-hidden behind a stand of old pines.
Maren had passed it on the way in without noticing it — it looked like storage, like something the estate kept around out of habit rather than use.
The door was open.
A young woman was sitting at the small table inside, both hands wrapped around a mug she wasn't drinking from.
She was perhaps twenty-two, with dark hair pulled back and the kind of stillness that comes not from calm but from having held something difficult for a very long time.
She looked up when Maren stepped through the door.
Neither of them spoke for a moment.
"You're Petra," Maren said.
"Yes."
Maren sat down across from her.
Aldric closed the door and stayed near it, giving them the table.
"How long have you known?" Maren asked.
"That I was lied to?" Petra set the mug down.
"About eight months.
Aldric found me.
He showed me the same documents he showed you." She stopped.
"I thought I was helping you.
They told me you were in no condition to sign.
They told me you had asked for me specifically.
They said you trusted me more than anyone and that if I didn't sign, Elodie would go into state care while you recovered."
"I didn't know you existed," Maren said carefully.
"Until forty minutes ago."
Petra nodded slowly.
"I know that now." She reached into the bag beside her chair and placed a folder on the table.
"Our mother gave me up when I was two.
You were already gone by then — placed with a different family.
I only found out about you when I was seventeen.
I tried to find you, but the adoption records were sealed." She paused.
"When the lawyer contacted me and said he was reaching out on your behalf, I thought—"
She stopped.
"You thought I'd finally found you first," Maren said.
Petra's hands tightened on the edge of the folder.
"Yes."
The cottage was very quiet.
Outside, faintly, the wedding music continued.
"What's in the folder?" Maren asked.
"Everything I kept.
The original letter.
The document I signed.
The envelope with the return address.
Photographs of the correspondence." Petra slid it across the table.
"And a statement I had notarized six weeks ago, once Aldric explained what had actually happened.
A lawyer in Portland helped me prepare it.
She said it was strong enough to support a fraud claim."
Maren opened the folder.
The letter was on top — printed on heavy paper, formal letterhead, the kind of document designed to look authoritative and final.
She read the first paragraph.
*On behalf of our client, Maren Vale, and in accordance with her expressed wishes during a period of medical incapacity…*
Her stomach turned.
"They used my name," she said.
"They wrote this as though it came from me."
"Yes."
"And you believed it."
"I was nineteen." Petra's voice didn't break, but it came close.
"I wanted a sister.
I wanted to do the right thing.
They told me the right thing was to sign."
Maren closed the folder.
She held it in both hands for a moment, feeling the weight of it — three years of her daughter's life, compressed into paper.
"The lawyer in Portland," she said.
"Is she willing to take this further?"
"She said she's been waiting for you to call."
Aldric spoke from near the door.
"There's one more thing." He moved to the small shelf beside the window and picked up a USB drive.
"The estate has a security system.
Has done for fifteen years.
Cameras at every entrance, the main path, the garden, the cliff walk." He set the drive on the table.
"The night you were admitted to the hospital, Dorian Mercer left this estate at eleven forty-two in the evening and returned at two seventeen in the morning.
The timestamp is on the drive.
So is the footage of him meeting with the lawyer in the estate car park four days before you signed anything."
Maren looked at the drive.
"He doesn't know you have this."
"He stopped paying attention to me twelve years ago," Aldric said.
"That was his mistake."
Maren picked up the drive.
She picked up the folder.
She sat with both of them in her hands and thought about Elodie pressing her palm flat against her dress over a wrist that hurt, and the way she had looked at Celestine before answering a question, and the four years of a life that had been built on a document signed by a nineteen-year-old girl who only wanted a sister.
"I need to make a phone call," she said.
"The lawyer?" Petra asked.
"First, yes." Maren stood.
"And then I need to go back to that wedding."
Petra looked up sharply.
"Why?"
"Because Dorian is about to do something to protect himself.
And I want to be there when he does it."
She was almost at the door when Petra spoke again.
"Maren."
She stopped.
"I'm sorry," Petra said.
"I know it doesn't fix anything.
But I need you to know I'm sorry."
Maren turned.
She looked at her sister — this young woman she had not known existed an hour ago, sitting in a groundskeeper's cottage with a notarized statement and a mug of cold tea and three years of guilt she had been carrying alone.
"You were nineteen," Maren said.
"And you thought you were helping me."
May you like
She held the door open.
"Come back to the wedding with me."
