Chapter 5 - Claire's First Lie
Daniel closed the closet panel before he questioned her.
Lily stayed beside him.
He would not send her out of the room. Not with the house compromised and not with a hidden child somewhere inside the walls.
"Start at the beginning," he told Claire.
She sat on the bed, hands clenched.
"The girl in the picture is named Emma."
"Your daughter?"
Claire flinched. "No. My sister's."
"You told me you were an only child."
"I lied."
Daniel's jaw tightened.
"That's not a small lie."
"My sister, Rebecca, disappeared twelve years ago."
"Disappeared how?"
"After she accused our parents of things nobody believed. Watching her. Recording her. Controlling where she went. Who she spoke to."
Daniel glanced at the three cameras on Lily's dresser.
"And then?"
"Rebecca took Emma and ran. A month later, police found her car near a river. No bodies. No Emma. Nothing."
"Why didn't you tell me?"
"Because my family buried it. They paid lawyers. They paid private investigators. They told everyone Rebecca was unstable."
Daniel's expression hardened. "Was she?"
"No."
That answer came too quickly to be uncertain.
Claire stared at the floor. "She was terrified."
"And you believed your parents anyway?"
"I was twenty-two. I wanted my life. I wanted to get away."
"So you erased your sister."
Tears slid down Claire's face. "Yes."
Lily moved closer to Daniel.
He looked at the photograph again.
"How old would Emma be now?"
Claire swallowed. "Sixteen."
Daniel pictured the small shadow in the corridor.
"That was not a sixteen-year-old."
"I know."
A sound came from the nightstand.
The white noise machine, unplugged on the floor, clicked on by itself.
A woman's voice filled the room.
Not the same calm voice Lily had heard before.
This one was older. Sharp. Controlled.
"Claire, you always did make everything difficult."
Claire stopped breathing.
Daniel looked at her.
"Who is that?"
She whispered one word.
"Mother."
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Daniel had met Margaret Vale twice, both times in crowded rooms where she smiled without warmth and remembered details nobody had told her directly. She had asked what time Daniel normally left for work. She had known Lily hated strawberries. At the time he had blamed Claire for oversharing. Now, standing in a bedroom wired like an interrogation room, he wondered how much Margaret had learned without Claire saying anything at all.
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