Chapter 4: Room 14
The elevator was empty.
Claire stood inside it with one hand pressed flat against the mirrored wall, watching the numbers climb.
Her bouquet was still in her other hand.
She hadn't thought to put it down.
The doors opened on the third floor.
She walked the corridor counting room numbers.
8.
10.
12.
14.
The door was unlocked.
She pushed it open.
The room was small.
A single bed, a window overlooking the car park, a narrow wardrobe.
Not a guest room.
Staff accommodation.
The kind of room no wedding guest would ever see.
She set the bouquet on the chair by the door.
Then she crouched beside the bed and slid her hand under the mattress.
Her fingers found it immediately.
A brown envelope, unsealed.
She pulled it out and sat on the edge of the bed.
Inside: three sheets of paper and a smaller photograph.
The photograph first.
Two adults she didn't recognize, standing in front of a house.
A woman holding a small girl — dark-haired, maybe three years old — on her hip.
On the back, in handwriting she didn't know: *Clara, age 3.
Before.*
Before what.
She unfolded the first sheet.
A letter, handwritten, several pages long.
The date at the top was six weeks ago.
*If you are reading this, then Rose found you.
She promised me she would try.
I didn't believe her.
I want to tell you that I am sorry it took this long.*
*My name is Clara.
I don't know if you remember me.
I was four when they separated us.
You were six.
I remember the garden.
I remember you used to hold my hand in the dark.
I remember your name.*
*Your name is Claire.*
She stopped reading.
Her hands were shaking.
Not the way they shake when you are cold.
The way they shake when your body understands something before your mind has caught up.
She looked at the window.
The car park below.
A taxi pulling in.
She made herself read on.
*I have been looking for you for eleven years.
Rose has been helping me since we were teenagers.
We found your name four years ago through a charity that works with separated siblings — but by then you were already engaged to Daniel Hargrove.
We didn't know what to do with that.
We didn't know if it was a coincidence or something else.*
*Then we found out who his mother is.*
*Her name before she married was Eleanor Voss.
She worked as a family court liaison in 1998 and 1999 in the county where we were born.
She was the woman who signed the paperwork that separated us.*
*I don't think it was legal.
I don't think it was an accident.*
*There is a document in this envelope.
Rose will know what to do with it if I can't be there.*
Claire looked at the second sheet.
A photocopied form.
Official letterhead, dated November 1999.
A family court separation order.
The signatures at the bottom.
One she didn't recognize.
The other was Eleanor Voss.
She sat very still for a long moment.
Then she heard footsteps in the corridor.
More than one person.
Moving quickly.
The door opened.
Daniel stood in the doorway.
Behind him, slightly to the left, his mother.
Eleanor's eyes went straight to the papers in Claire's hands.
Her expression didn't change.
But something behind it did.
May you like
"Put those down," she said.
"You don't understand what you're looking at."
