Chapter 6 - The Woman in the Mirror
Vanessa Whitmore had never hated a maid enough to spend ten million dollars. Grace understood that now. The cruelty at the party had been theater, a way to get her onto a rig someone could sabotage while a room full of witnesses blamed her own reckless pride.
“Why me?” she asked.
Vincent placed the financial records on the table. “That's what we're going to find out.”
He didn't say we like a command. He asked if she wanted him involved. Grace appreciated that more than she meant to.
They visited Saint Agnes the next morning under false names. Its main building had been converted into expensive apartments, but Sister Miriam, a retired nun who once managed the home, still lived in a cottage nearby. She saw Grace and dropped her teacup.
“Clara?” she whispered.
“My name is Grace.”
The nun's hands shook. “Of course. Forgive me. You look exactly like your mother.”
“Her name was Evelyn Bennett.”
Sister Miriam closed her eyes. “No. Your mother was Clara Vale.”
Grace stared at her. “That's impossible.”
Miriam brought out a photograph from a locked drawer. The woman in it had Grace's dark eyes and the same small dimple in her left cheek. She stood between Daniel and a younger Salvatore Moretti, holding a blue wooden bird.
“Clara was an accountant,” Miriam said. “She found false adoption records and missing children. Daniel helped her gather proof. They tried to expose the people running it.”
“What happened to her?”
“Eleven years ago, she came here bleeding. She gave me a list of names and begged me to hide three children. That night, men took her away.”
“Is she dead?” Grace asked.
“I never saw a body.”
Vincent leaned forward. “Where's the list?”
Miriam looked at the door. “I gave it to someone I trusted.”
A glass pane shattered. A stone hit the floor wrapped in red ribbon. Through the broken window, Grace saw a woman in a broad hat standing beside a parked car. For a second, the woman lifted her face.
Grace saw the same dimple.
May you like
“Mama?” she whispered.
The woman raised a finger to her lips, then disappeared into the car as a red laser dot crawled across Sister Miriam's chest.
