Chapter 2 - REBECCA
Rebecca Morgan was four years older than Diane.
Growing up, Claire heard only fragments.
Rebecca was rebellious.
Rebecca drank.
Rebecca stole money.
Rebecca ran away.
Rebecca embarrassed the family.
At twenty-three, Rebecca disappeared from contact almost completely.
Ten years later, Diane told Claire she had died in another state.
No funeral.
No grave visit.
No detailed explanation.
Claire was eight.
She accepted what children accept.
The box changed that.
Claire also found one official document in the box.
A death notice.
Rebecca Morgan Hale.
Age forty-one.
Vermont.
The notice listed:
one daughter.
Claire stared.
A daughter?
Diane had always said Rebecca never had children.
That was the first surprise inside the history.
Claire searched public records.
Rebecca had one daughter:
Maya Hale.
Born when Rebecca was twenty-six.
Maya would be thirty-nine now.
Alive.
Claire’s stomach dropped.
Diane had not only erased Rebecca.
She had erased Rebecca’s child from the family story too.
Claire found no phone number.
Only an old address.
Grace warned:
“Do not contact her until you know why she disappeared from the family.”
Claire nodded.
But now the box was no longer about dead people only.
Someone living might know the other half.
Claire found it three weeks earlier in the attic of her late grandfather’s storage property.
The building was being cleared for sale.
Most boxes contained:
tax returns,
old tools,
Christmas decorations,
photographs.
This one had Claire’s name written on the bottom.
Not top.
Bottom.
CLAIRE — ONLY IF SHE ASKS.
Claire almost thought the handwriting belonged to her grandmother.
It did not.
The first letter began:
Claire,
If you are reading this, then you are old enough to decide whether the family story is true.
Claire stopped reading that day.
Then continued the next.
May you like
The writer was Rebecca.
Her dead aunt.
