Chapter 7 - THE APARTMENT THREE BLOCKS AWAY
Jessi stared at the address until all the color left her face.
“You bought a condo near me?”
Chloe said nothing.
Emily moved beside her sister.
“How long have you known where Jessi lives?”
Still nothing.
Daniel answered.
“Apparently, longer than any of us realized.”
His attorney had discovered the condominium while reviewing Chloe's finances.
It had been purchased through a small LLC eight months earlier.
Not six weeks.
The recent $240,000 payment had paid off the remaining mortgage.
Jessi looked at her mother.
“You've been living near me?”
“No.”
“Then why buy it?”
“I wanted somewhere in the city.”
“Three blocks from my building?”
Chloe's silence became an answer.
Emma reached back into the crate.
“There were photographs too.”
She removed a thick envelope I hadn't seen.
Jessi opened it.
The first image showed her leaving work.
The next showed Emily outside a soccer field.
Hannah entering a dance studio.
Grace leaving a hospital.
Mia walking across her college campus.
Sophie getting off a school bus.
My stomach turned.
“These were taken without us knowing.”
Emma nodded.
“I found receipts from a private investigator.”
Chloe finally spoke.
“I just wanted to know you were safe.”
Sophie stared at her.
“You knew where we were?”
“Yes.”
“For how long?”
Chloe closed her eyes.
“Years.”
I had thought abandonment was the worst possible answer.
I had been wrong.
She hadn't lost us.
She hadn't been unable to find us.
She had watched from a distance while choosing not to walk closer.
Jessi held up a picture from four years earlier.
It showed all six girls and me outside a restaurant on my fiftieth birthday.
“You knew Dad hadn't moved us away.”
Chloe nodded.
“You knew our phone numbers?”
“Yes.”
“You knew where we went to school?”
“Yes.”
“Then why did you keep telling Daniel that Dad hid us?”
Chloe suddenly shouted:
“Because I couldn't come back!”
Her voice cracked across the ballroom.
Everyone froze.
“I had told one lie, then another, then another. Daniel's family believed Luca hated me. His friends believed I fought for you. What was I supposed to do after five years? Ten? Walk into your lives and admit I chose parties and vacations while Luca raised six children?”
“Yes,” Jessi said.
One word.
Quiet.
Devastating.
“Yes. You were supposed to tell the truth.”
Chloe covered her face.
Then Sophie noticed something written on the back of one photograph.
A date.
And a location.
She handed it to me.
It was from her middle-school choir recital.
I remembered sitting in the front row alone.
But according to the investigator's note, Chloe hadn't simply received a photograph afterward.
May you like
She had been there.
Inside the auditorium.
