Chapter 8 - The Woman Who Sold Her Silence
The DNA report should have answered Elena's questions.
Instead, it created a hundred more.
If she had been the missing baby, why had her family raised her as an Ashford? Why had her mother never told her? And why had her grandfather ordered the test in secret?
Alex wanted to take the report to the police.
Elena refused.
“Richard has spent decades building relationships with people who owe him favors,” she said. “If we hand this over without understanding what it means, he'll destroy the evidence before anyone investigates.”
“So what do we do?”
“We find the nurse.”
Margaret had located her under a different name in a small town in Connecticut. Her name was Evelyn Price, and she had spent the last twenty years working at a retirement community.
When Elena and Alex arrived, Evelyn was sitting beside a window, watching rain slide down the glass.
The moment she saw the photograph, she began to cry.
“You found her,” she whispered.
Elena sat beside her.
“Who was the baby?”
Evelyn looked at Alex.
“Your mother gave birth to a little girl at that clinic. She was unmarried, terrified, and determined to keep the baby. Richard convinced her that the child would ruin his political ambitions and destroy the family.”
Alex's face hardened.
“My mother never told me she had a daughter.”
“She was forced to give her up. Richard arranged an adoption through a private agency. When your mother discovered that the agency had falsified the papers, she tried to find the child.”
“Why didn't she go to the police?”
“Because Richard threatened to have you taken away from her.”
Alex looked as though someone had struck him.
Evelyn continued.
“Your mother eventually discovered the baby had been placed with Catherine Ashford, who couldn't have children of her own. Catherine loved that little girl. She raised her as her daughter.”
Elena stopped breathing.
“My mother adopted me?”
Evelyn nodded.
“Catherine never knew the full story. She believed the adoption was legal. Your grandfather discovered the truth years later and paid to have the records sealed. He wanted to protect you.”
Alex stared at Elena.
“You're my sister.”
The words hung between them.
Elena felt the room spin. The man she had begun to trust, the man who had stood beside her when everyone else treated her like a spectacle, was her half brother.
She looked at the DNA report again.
The answer had been there all along.
Alex's mother had given birth to a daughter.
Catherine Ashford had raised that daughter.
And Elena Ashford had spent her entire life searching for a family that had been hiding in plain sight.
Then Evelyn reached for her hand.
“There's something else,” she whispered.
Elena leaned closer.
“Your mother didn't die of illness.”
Alex went rigid.
Evelyn's voice broke.
“Richard ordered the clinic records destroyed because your mother discovered who arranged the fire.”
“Who?” Alex demanded.
Evelyn looked directly at him.
“Your father.”
Then she added the one detail neither of them could have imagined.
May you like
“He wasn't trying to kill the baby.”
“He was trying to kill your mother.”
