Chapter 4 - The Girl Who Was Never Supposed to Be There
Paramedics carried Patricia upstairs while police sealed the basement.
She had a head injury, two fractured fingers, and bruising around her throat.
Before they placed her in the ambulance, she asked to speak to me.
Officer Ortiz allowed me to stand beside the stretcher.
Patricia’s voice was barely audible.
“Your father knew Gerald would come back.”
“For what?”
“The records.”
“What records?”
Her eyes moved toward the house.
“He kept everything.”
“Who hurt you?”
Patricia began to cry.
“I helped them file the deed. Gerald said you had agreed. Then Daniel brought me here.”
My breath stopped.
I looked through the rain toward my husband.
Daniel stood beneath the porch roof with Emma beside him.
“He brought you here?”
“He wanted me to correct it. He said Gerald had lied to him.”
“Then who attacked you?”
Patricia stared past me.
Marlene stood inside the foyer.
Patricia’s pulse monitor began sounding faster.
“Ask her what happened seventeen years ago.”
The paramedics moved her into the ambulance.
I returned to the house.
Emma had gone upstairs with Mrs. Ellis. Olivia sat at the kitchen table, crying silently.
Daniel followed me into the dining room.
“I did bring Patricia here,” he said. “But she was conscious when I left the basement.”
“You left an injured woman beneath my house?”
“She was not injured then.”
“Why did you bring her at all?”
“I found the forged deed in Dad’s briefcase this afternoon. I confronted him. Patricia called and said she wanted to undo it.”
“Why did you not call me?”
“Because I knew how it would look.”
“It looks like you helped steal my house.”
“I signed one document.”
The room became still.
“What document?”
Daniel removed a folded page from his pocket.
It authorized Hart Residential Holdings to manage the property during a temporary medical incapacity.
“My father told me you had requested it because of your hospital schedule.”
“My schedule does not make me medically incapacitated.”
“I know that now.”
I stared at his signature.
“You did not ask me.”
“I trusted him.”
“You chose him.”
Daniel flinched.
Marlene entered the room.
“Gerald has been lying to all of us.”
I faced her.
“Patricia told me to ask you what happened seventeen years ago.”
Marlene sat down as though her legs had stopped working.
Gerald watched from the doorway.
“Do not say another word.”
She looked at him for a long moment.
Then she turned to me.
“Your father found Emma’s mother standing in the rain.”
I almost laughed from disbelief.
“I am Emma’s mother.”
Marlene shook her head.
“I mean her biological mother.”
Daniel went white.
I could not breathe.
Emma was my daughter.
I had carried her for nine months. I had felt her kick beneath my ribs. I had held her minutes after she was born.
“What are you talking about?”
Marlene covered her mouth.
“Not Emma,” she whispered. “You.”
Gerald crossed the room and struck his cane against the table.
“Marlene.”
She flinched but continued.
“Your father found you outside this house when you were an infant. Your real mother left you on the porch with a letter.”
I stared at her.
“My mother died giving birth to me.”
“That is what he told everyone.”
Gerald seized Marlene’s shoulder.
Officer Ortiz stepped between them.
“Take your hand off her.”
Marlene began sobbing.
“Rachel, your father changed your records. Gerald helped him.”
I looked at Gerald.
He did not deny it.
“Why?”
Marlene’s eyes moved toward the basement door.
May you like
“Because of what your mother put inside that safe.”
Continue to the next part: Rachel learns that her father’s house may have been built around evidence powerful enough to destroy Gerald’s entire life.
