Chapter 6 - The Two Women Had Met Before
Claire went pale.
“That’s impossible.”
Daniel shook his head.
“I found proof.”
He explained that five years earlier he had begun researching his family history.
He wasn’t trying to find me again.
At least not initially.
He wanted medical history after Emma developed a heart condition that doctors suspected might be hereditary.
While searching through Claire’s old college records, Daniel found a yearbook.
Margaret’s maiden name appeared in it.
Margaret Ellison.
Claire stared at him.
“She went to our college?”
“Not as a student.”
Daniel pulled out his phone.
He had saved photographs of old yearbook pages.
Margaret had worked for the university’s administrative office for one year.
The same year Claire and I graduated.
“She knew us?”
“I think so.”
Daniel enlarged one image.
There I was.
Twenty-one.
Standing beside Claire at a spring fundraiser.
In the background, almost hidden by a group of students, was Margaret.
Watching us.
My stomach tightened.
“She knew who I was before that birthday dinner.”
“Yes.”
Claire covered her mouth.
Then she whispered:
“I remember her.”
I turned.
“You do?”
“She worked in records.”
Claire’s face changed as an old memory resurfaced.
“After you moved, I went to the administrative office because I needed your forwarding information. I didn’t know Margaret’s name then, but she helped me.”
Daniel nodded.
“That’s probably how she knew where Dad lived.”
Dad.
The word hit me so hard I almost missed everything afterward.
Daniel had called me Dad.
Perhaps accidentally.
Perhaps not.
I didn’t mention it.
Claire began pacing.
“She gave me the address.”
“Then she followed you,” Daniel said.
I stared at him.
“How do you know?”
“Because she admitted part of it when we met.”
At the café, Daniel confronted Margaret with the yearbook.
Margaret confessed that she had noticed me months before we formally met.
She had developed a crush.
A serious one.
She watched me and Claire from a distance.
After graduation, Margaret learned from office records that I had relocated.
Then Claire came asking for my address.
Margaret realized Claire intended to find me.
“So she got there first?” I asked.
Daniel nodded.
“Apparently.”
Margaret drove to my city.
She found my apartment building.
But she didn’t knock.
Not then.
She waited.
When Claire arrived, Margaret saw her opportunity.
She walked upstairs and pretended she belonged there.
“She wasn’t even inside my apartment?”
“No.”
Claire looked stunned.
“She opened your building’s front door and stood outside your apartment.”
That explained something I had never considered.
Claire had always said Margaret answered my door.
But she hadn’t.
She had answered the hallway.
One lie changed four lives.
Then Daniel said:
“There was another reason she wanted Claire gone.”
“What reason?”
He looked toward his mother.
Claire’s expression shifted.
“Daniel…”
He reached into his wallet and removed an old photograph.
A young Margaret stood beside an older man.
I recognized him instantly.
My father.
“What is this?”
Daniel’s voice became quiet.
“Margaret knew your family before she knew you.”
He turned the photograph over.
Written on the back was a date from twenty-three years before Margaret and I married.
And two names.
May you like
Thomas Harper and Margaret Ellison.
My father had known my future wife when she was a child.
