Chapter 6 - THE WOMAN IN THE HOSPITAL RECORDS
My mother had been dead for six years.
I'd held her hand when she stopped breathing.
I'd watched the doctors confirm it.
I'd buried her beside my father.
So when Daniel Whitmore implied that another Carter woman knew what happened, I assumed he meant me.
Until Lucas's attorney uncovered something strange.
The hospital records listed a visitor who had entered my mother's room thirty minutes before her death.
Name: Eleanor Carter.
I stared at the screen.
“My mother's sister?”
Lucas looked at me.
“You have an aunt?”
“No.”
At least, I'd never known one.
Mom had always said she was an only child.
But the hospital's archived visitor log showed Eleanor Carter entering the oncology wing.
There was even a security photograph.
A woman in her late forties.
Dark hair.
A familiar face.
She looked so much like my mother that my knees weakened.
Lucas studied the image.
“She could be Rose's sister.”
“Then why didn't Mom tell us?”
Rebecca Shaw located an old birth record.
Rose Carter had been born Rose Bennett.
She had a younger twin sister.
Eleanor Bennett.
The sisters had grown up in foster care after their parents died.
Rose later changed her surname when she married my father.
Eleanor disappeared from public records twenty years earlier.
I stared at the photograph.
“She's alive?”
“Possibly,” Rebecca said.
“But we need to confirm it.”
Investigators continued searching for Sophie.
Meanwhile, Rebecca discovered something else.
Eleanor had worked at Cole House twenty years earlier.
Her job title:
Head of Textile Development.
She'd been dismissed following an accusation of corporate theft.
The person who reported her?
Margaret Voss.
I felt a chill.
Everything kept leading back to Lucas's aunt.
Lucas looked toward the purple gown.
“My mother used to talk about two sisters who could make silk look like it was alive.”
I turned toward him.
“Rose and Eleanor?”
He nodded slowly.
“She said they were the most talented people she'd ever worked with.”
My eyes filled with tears.
Then Rebecca opened another document.
A financial transfer made six years earlier.
Recipient: Eleanor Bennett.
Amount: $500,000.
Authorized by Margaret Voss.
Lucas's expression changed.
“Why would Margaret pay Eleanor half a million dollars?”
Rebecca checked the transaction notes.
Then looked up.
“Because Eleanor signed a confidentiality agreement.”
I swallowed.
“About what?”
Rebecca hesitated.
“The agreement mentions the circumstances surrounding Rose Carter's final hospitalization.”
My heart stopped.
Then Lucas's phone buzzed.
A photograph arrived.
It showed Sophie sitting in a chair inside a warehouse office.
She looked frightened but unharmed.
Standing behind her was a woman with dark hair.
A woman who looked exactly like my mother.
May you like
And beneath the photograph was one sentence.
“Your aunt is ready to tell you how Rose really died.”
