Chapter 8 The Photograph and the Promise
857 Words
Evelyn's POV
I did not put the photograph down for a long time.
Aunt Mirabel guided me back to the rocking chair and sat on the footstool in front of me. The brothers and cousins had not moved. Benjamin leaned against the far wall with his arms at his sides, watching Aunt Mirabel carefully and patiently like someone who had been waiting for this conversation for years.
"How long have you had this?" I asked.
Aunt Mirabel pressed her palms together on her knees. "Since before you came to live with me. The woman who brought you told me to keep it safe. She said you might need it one day."
"The woman who brought me," I repeated slowly. "You told me a social worker delivered me."
She looked down at her hands. "I know what I told you but I am sorry, Evelyn. I was afraid back then. Your adoptive aunt made me promise not to ask questions, and the woman who brought you warned me that asking too many things could put you in danger."
"What was her name?"
"S…a..ndra." She stammered. "She was a nurse. She was so kind and she told me to never let anyone know where you were."
Emmanuel's pen stopped moving on his notepad. He and Benjamin exchanged a look across the room.
"Sandra brought you to my sister first," Aunt Mirabel continued. "My sister passed you to me two years later when the Stones took you in but I kept the photograph. I kept it because something about that nurse's face told me this child had people who loved her…. People who were looking."
My throat tightened. I pressed one finger against the glass of the frame, touching the face of the woman holding the baby.
"She looks like me," I said.
"You look like her," Aunt Mirabel said. "Sarah was a beautiful woman, from everything I could see in that one photograph."
I set the frame down carefully on my knee and looked at Benjamin. His jaw was clenched so tight that I could see the muscles working beneath his skin. He was holding something back, and whatever it was, it cost him something to keep it secured.
"Sandra is still alive," he said. "We located her four months ago. She is in a care home outside the city."
"Then we can ask her," I said. "She can tell us everything."
"We planned to." Benjamin straightened up from the wall. "But three days ago, our investigator reported that Tonia Sinclair paid Sandra a visit."
The name landed in the room like a stone dropped into still water.
Moses, who had come back from the kitchen and was standing near the door, crossed his arms slowly. Matthew's expression did not change, but his eyes moved to the window the way they always did when he was calculating something.
"What did Tonia want from an old nurse?" I asked.
"We do not know what they said," Emmanuel replied. "What we know is that Tonia brought recording equipment. Whatever Sandra told her, Tonia has it saved."
I looked down at the photograph again. My supposed mum's face looked back at me with those tired but bright eyes.
Three days ago while I was still inside the Williams house, still folding my clothes back into a suitcase, still apologizing to the woman who grabbed me first, Tonia had already been one step ahead of everyone.
"She knew," I said. "She knew before she even walked through that front door that there was something bigger happening."
"Yes," Benjamin replied.
"She came to the Williams house to push me out before I could find out who I really am."
The room stayed quiet, but the quality of that quiet was different now. It was the kind of quiet that fills up with things people are thinking but not saying.
Franklin rolled up his floor plan slowly and set it aside. Samuel had not returned to the piano.
Aunt Mirabel reached out and covered my hand with hers. Her palm was warm and dry, and the touch held me the way it always had since I was nine years old and afraid of the dark.
"You are going to be all right my darling," she said. "You have people now."
Emmanuel's phone buzzed on the coffee table. He picked it up and read the screen, and for a second, he frowned. Then he turned the phone around so everyone could see the message.
It came from an unknown number. Just one line.
"The nurse is ready to talk but only to the girl with the crescent moon birthmark."
I looked at Benjamin. He looked at me.
Nobody in this room had mentioned my birthmark out loud tonight. I had not shown it to anyone. It was on my left ankle, barely visible, small as a thumbnail.
Whoever sent that message knew about it and they sent it to Emmanuel's private number. Emmanuel has never given that number to anybody and he has also never received a call through that number.
"Get your coat, Evelyn." Benjamin said in a very low tone
I was already standing.
- Writer
