Chapter 8 - Eleanor's Impossible Choice

“You sent a stranger to watch my brother?” I asked.

“To protect him,” Eleanor answered. “I knew someone might come after the key. I instructed the contractor to identify any suspicious visitors, not intimidate Noah. I was wrong not to tell you.”

“People keep saying they protected us while we were the ones afraid.”

She nodded. “You're right.”

It was the first apology I'd heard all day that didn't try to excuse itself. She gave me the contractor's records, then agreed to speak to the detective herself. It didn't make me trust her. It made trust seem possible.

Tessa followed the hospital trail. The private physician, Dr. Samuel Keene, had retired to Vermont. The clinic where the mysterious mother sought help had closed twelve years earlier. Its records were stored in a county warehouse. We could request them, but we needed a court order to access anything protected by medical privacy laws.

Meanwhile, videos of the canceled wedding were everywhere. The public saw Vanessa dumping champagne over me, then Daniel confronting her. Comment sections declared her a monster and me a hero. Neither label paid Noah's tuition or repaired the exhaustion in my bones.

My hotel manager, Gloria Chen, called to say I'd been suspended pending an investigation into the leak. “I didn't leak it,” I told her.

“I believe you,” Gloria said. “The owners are scared of being sued.”

I asked whether she could keep my schedule open. She couldn't promise.

Daniel offered to cover my lost wages. I refused. “I need people to stop deciding what my life is worth without asking me.”

He looked hurt but didn't argue. Later he returned with something better: a signed statement that the bride had assaulted an employee, a preservation demand for the hotel's remaining footage, and a lawyer willing to represent me independently of his family.

At midnight Tessa called. She'd found an old news photograph of the young mother leaving the clinic. Her face was partially hidden, but the newspaper caption identified her as a nineteen-year-old student named Rebecca Lane.

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“Where is she now?” I asked.

“In town,” Tessa said. “She owns a small bookstore. And Emily? She says her daughter was buried in an empty coffin.”