Chapter 1 - THE PHOTOGRAPH THAT SHOULD NOT EXIST
Three weeks before the Hale Foundation’s annual charity luncheon, Victoria Hale found a photograph inside her dead mother’s desk.
It showed two little girls beneath a maple tree. Victoria recognized herself at seven: blonde hair, stubborn chin, cream Sunday dress. Beside her stood a smaller girl whose face had been scratched away with a blade.
Both girls wore pale ribbons.
On the back, in Rebecca Hale’s handwriting, were six words:
For my daughters. Never separate them again.
Victoria locked the photograph in her handbag before the estate lawyer entered. Charles Mercer had come to inventory Rebecca’s private papers after her sudden death. He was silver-haired, exact, and irritatingly immune to wealth.
“Did you remove anything?” he asked.
“Family photographs.”
“Those are part of the inventory.”
“They are part of my life.”
Charles did not argue. He wrote something on his legal pad.
Rebecca’s will left most assets to the Hale Foundation, which Victoria had chaired for twelve years. The family mansion passed to Victoria outright. One provision, however, suspended distribution of the foundation’s controlling shares for ninety days.
“Your mother directed us to locate a beneficiary identified only as E.H.,” Charles said.
Victoria kept her expression still. “There is no E.H.”
“Then the search will confirm that.”
That night, Victoria burned the photograph in her fireplace.
The image curled, blackened, and disappeared.
May you like
The next morning, an identical copy arrived without a return address. Beneath Rebecca’s sentence, someone had added a new line in blue ink:
You buried the wrong sister.
