Chapter 8 - THE PHOTO BOX
I went back to my father’s house that afternoon.
Technically Clara still lived there, but she was out, and Daniel had arranged for me to access the locked den under estate-review pretext. He knew exactly which legal pressure points to use. That was why I hired him.
I wasn’t looking for romance letters.
I was looking for timeline.
If Glen and Clara had been involved for eight months, I wanted to know whether my father—dead eleven months now—had suspected anything before he died.
The den smelled like cedar, dust, and old money.
I searched desk drawers, file cabinets, and the antique photo box my father had used for decades to dump printed pictures no one ever organized.
In the bottom tray I found an envelope labeled SUMMER GALA.
Inside were photos from the charity event nine months earlier.
Me in green silk.
Glen in black tie.
Clara in pale gold standing much too close to him in two separate background shots.
It could have been coincidence.
Then I found something better.
A candid taken by someone careless.
My father in the foreground talking to guests.
Behind him, on the terrace, Glen with one hand low at Clara’s back.
Too intimate.
Too practiced.
My father’s head slightly turned toward them.
As if he had just started to notice.
My stomach knotted.
Then inside the same envelope was a small folded note in my father’s handwriting.
Need to speak with Rachel privately about Glen / Clara. Something feels off.
The date was five days before his fatal stroke.
I sat down hard in my father’s leather chair.
He knew.
Or almost knew.
And he never got the chance to tell me.
I was still staring at the note when I heard a voice behind me.
“You shouldn’t be in here.”
Clara.
I turned slowly.
She stood in the doorway, sunglasses pushed into her hair, face gone hard when she saw the envelope in my hand.
“I think I should be exactly here,” I said.
She took one step in.
“What are you trying to prove?”
“That my father wasn’t as blind as you hoped.”
Something flickered in her eyes.
Not guilt.
Not fear.
Recognition.
She shut the door behind her.
“He loved you too much to tell you the truth.”
My mouth went dry.
“What truth?”
She smiled without warmth.
“That your marriage was already over before I touched it.”
I stood.
“You’re pregnant with my embryo.”
“And you are still making this about ownership.”
“It is about ownership. It is also about fraud, betrayal, theft, adultery, and the money you siphoned from my daughter’s trust to finance it.”
For the first time, her composure cracked.
Barely.
Then she said something I had not yet considered.
“You should be more careful with the word theft.”
I stilled.
“Why?”
She looked at me steadily.
“Because if the court starts pulling on financial threads, you may learn Glen wasn’t the first man in your life to rearrange money around you.”
I stared at her.
She had just thrown a bomb and left it at my feet.
“What are you talking about?”
She opened the door again.
“That,” she said, resting a hand on her stomach, “is not the only thing your father left unfinished.”
May you like
Then she walked out.
And for the first time, I wondered if this nightmare was hiding inside an even older one.
