Chapter 10 - The Woman in My Mother’s Coat
The video continued inside the ambulance.
My mother, Eleanor Avery, stood beside Thomas in the underground vault.
She looked older than she had in my memories, but there was no mistaking her face.
The same red hair I had inherited.
The same careful posture.
The same silver bracelet she wore every day of my childhood.
Caroline began shaking.
“We buried her.”
I remembered the funeral.
The closed casket.
The doctor who explained that the cancer had spread too quickly.
Margaret Whitmore had attended the service.
At the time, I thought she was there because our families moved in the same social circles.
Now I wondered whether she had attended to make certain no one questioned the body.
Thomas spoke in the recording.
“Eleanor created the original property network with Charles Avery and Margaret Whitmore. When Charles tried to end it, Eleanor helped move the accounts beyond his control.”
Our mother remained silent.
Thomas looked at her.
“You promised Evelyn and Caroline would never be used.”
Eleanor answered.
“I promised they would survive.”
“You let Preston target Caroline.”
“I needed him close enough to Margaret to expose her.”
“You used your own daughter as bait.”
“I learned from people who used me first.”
Caroline stepped away from the screen.
“No.”
I reached for her, but she pulled back.
“Our mother watched Preston manipulate me?”
“We do not know when this was recorded.”
“The date is three months after Thomas died.”
Sophie held my hand.
“Is Grandma alive?”
I could not answer.
On the video, Thomas placed the diamond brooch on the desk.
“The transaction copy proves Eleanor controls Morrow Capital.”
Caroline looked toward the burned hall.
The corporation receiving her stolen inheritance was not owned by Margaret.
It was owned by our mother.
Thomas continued.
“Margaret thinks she is transferring the Avery company into her own network. She does not know Eleanor has redirected everything.”
The woman in the recording moved closer to him.
“What did you tell Evelyn before the crash?”
“Nothing.”
“You wrote her a letter.”
“I destroyed it.”
“You were always a poor liar.”
Eleanor removed a pistol.
The screen flickered.
Thomas stood quickly.
The recording ended before we saw what happened next.
Aaron checked the file.
“There is another segment.”
He opened it.
The next video began two hours later.
The vault was empty except for blood on the floor.
A man entered carrying Sophie’s stuffed rabbit.
It was the same rabbit she had brought to the wedding.
I looked at the toy beside her.
“How did he have that?”
Sophie shook her head.
The man placed a tiny device inside the rabbit’s back seam.
Then he turned toward the camera.
Preston.
But the timestamp was three years old.
He had entered our lives long before meeting Caroline.
He had been near Sophie before we even knew his name.
Preston looked into the lens.
“If Evelyn ever opens this file, it means Margaret failed.”
He smiled.
“And if Margaret failed, Eleanor will come for the child herself.”
Sophie pressed against me.
A state officer entered the ambulance.
“We found a vehicle beneath the west tunnel.”
“Margaret’s?”
“The vehicle is registered to Eleanor Avery.”
Caroline gripped the edge of the seat.
“Our mother is dead.”
The officer held up a photograph taken from a traffic camera less than ten minutes earlier.
Margaret sat in the passenger seat.
A red haired woman was driving.
Her face was partially hidden, but she wore my mother’s silver bracelet.
I stepped out of the ambulance.
Police lights flashed across the wet street. Smoke rose from Hawthorne Hall while firefighters moved through the blackened doors.
Preston’s ambulance was gone.
I turned toward the officer.
“Where did they take the groom?”
He checked his radio.
“No ambulance transported Preston Whitmore.”
Caroline stared at the empty space where the stretcher had been.
Someone had removed him during the confusion.
My phone rang.
The number was blocked.
I answered.
For several seconds, I heard only the sound of a car moving quickly.
Then a woman spoke.
“Evelyn.”
My knees nearly failed.
I knew that voice.
I had heard it in childhood every night before I fell asleep.
“Mom?”
Caroline covered her mouth.
The woman continued.
“You should have left the vault closed.”
“Where is Thomas?”
“He is alive.”
Sophie looked up at me.
I tightened my grip on the phone.
“Put him on.”
“I cannot.”
“Why?”
“Because Thomas is not the person you need to fear.”
A second voice came through the call.
Preston.
“Sophie still has the key.”
I looked down at the stuffed rabbit.
A faint green light had begun blinking beneath its fabric.
I tore open the seam.
Inside was a metal key, a memory chip, and a recent photograph.
The photograph showed Thomas standing outside Sophie’s school.
It had been taken the previous morning.
On the back, someone had written:
He has been watching his daughter for three years.
My mother’s voice returned.
“Bring Sophie to the address I send you. Come alone.”
“If you touch her…”
“I have spent twelve years making certain no one could.”
A message appeared on my phone.
It contained an address outside San Antonio and a photograph of Thomas sitting inside a locked room.
He was alive.
Behind him stood Margaret, Preston, and my mother.
But there was one more person in the photograph.
A woman wearing my white jacket.
A woman with my face.
Caroline stared at the image.
“Evelyn, who is that?”
Before I could answer, the lights across Hawthorne Hall went out.
Every police radio began broadcasting the same recorded message in Thomas’s voice.
“Do not trust the woman calling herself Evelyn Avery.”
Sophie slowly pulled her hand from mine.
Then she looked past me toward the dark ballroom entrance.
A second red haired woman stepped from the smoke.
She was wearing the same elegant white outfit as me.
She opened her arms toward Sophie.
May you like
“Come to Mommy.”
Continue to the next part: Sophie must identify which woman is her real mother before the final secret of the Avery family is revealed.
