Chapter 2 - THE DAUGHTER FROM THE OTHER FAMILY
Emma shouldn't have known my daughters.
Yet Jessi hugged her like an old friend.
That was the second shock of the night.
Chloe stared between them.
“How long have you two been talking?”
“Six months,” Emma answered.
Daniel's daughter was twenty-eight, elegantly dressed, but visibly nervous.
She looked nothing like someone enjoying revenge.
She looked disappointed.
That was worse.
Emma explained that Daniel was selling one of his homes outside Greenwich earlier that year.
She had helped clear a storage room Chloe rarely used.
Behind several suitcases, she found the crate.
Hundreds of letters.
All apparently returned by me.
“At first,” Emma said, “I thought they proved everything Chloe had told us.”
I felt my stomach tighten.
“What did she tell you?”
Emma looked at me.
“That you wouldn't allow her near the girls.”
Someone in the room whispered, “Oh my God.”
Chloe shook her head.
“Emma, stop.”
But Emma continued.
“For fifteen years, Chloe told Dad and everyone in our family that she called constantly. That Luca changed phone numbers. That he moved the girls without telling her. That every birthday gift came back unopened.”
Jessi held up one envelope.
“There's just one problem.”
She turned it around.
The postage stamp was fake.
Emma had discovered it accidentally.
Several envelopes supposedly mailed in different years used identical postal markings.
Same ink.
Same spacing.
Same tiny printing defect.
Then she found a rubber stamp kit inside another box.
Chloe had manufactured the returned letters herself.
The room went completely silent.
I couldn't look away from her.
Fifteen years.
All those nights I wondered how a mother could forget six daughters.
She hadn't forgotten them.
She had built evidence pretending she'd tried.
“Why?” I asked.
Chloe's eyes filled with tears.
“You don't understand.”
“Then explain it.”
“I was scared.”
“Of what?”
Her gaze moved toward Emma.
Emma answered for her.
“Of Daniel finding out she lied.”
Chloe's voice sharpened.
“That's not true!”
Emma reached into her purse.
“I wish it wasn't.”
She handed Jessi a folder.
Inside were bank statements.
I recognized Daniel's name immediately.
Monthly transfers.
Two thousand dollars.
Sometimes three.
Then special payments every December.
Emma looked at me.
“Dad believed Chloe was sending this money to you for the girls.”
My pulse seemed to stop.
I had never received one dollar.
Jessi looked down the list.
Fifteen years of payments.
Then she read the total.
“Four hundred and eighty-six thousand dollars.”
Chloe closed her eyes.
But Emma wasn't finished.
“That's only what Dad knows about.”
She turned another page.
“There was another account.”
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And according to the balance printed at the bottom, Chloe hadn't spent all the money.
She had invested it.
