Chapter 2: The Name on the Photograph
Inside the briefcase were medical records.
Dozens of them.
Prescription bottles.
A handwritten care schedule.
And a photograph of a young woman in a hospital bed, smiling weakly at the camera.
Richard was written at the bottom in her handwriting.
*My person.*
Mom's legs gave out.
I caught her before she reached the floor.
"Who is she?" I asked Chloe.
Chloe wiped her face with her sleeve.
"Her name is Dana.
She's thirty-four.
And she's been in a care facility twelve minutes south of here for almost two years."
The room went completely silent.
"He goes every single night," Chloe said.
"I watched him walk in.
The nurses all knew him by name."
Mom stared at the photograph for a long time.
Then, very quietly, she asked the question none of us had thought to ask.
"Who is she to him?"
Chloe looked at her.
Her voice dropped to almost nothing.
"Grandma…
her last name is the same as his."
Mom looked up slowly.
"Richard never told you he had a daughter."
It wasn't a question.
It was the moment everything shifted.
And then my phone buzzed on the table.
An unknown number.
One text message.
May you like
*She saw me tonight.
We need to talk before your mother finds out the rest.*
