Chapter 2 - THE NAME MISSING FROM THE FAMILY TREE
Victoria hired private investigator Grant Lowe before calling the police. Public attention was dangerous. The Hale name appeared on hospitals, scholarship buildings, and the city’s largest shelter for women and children. A scandal would not remain private for long.
Grant searched birth records, school archives, and Rebecca’s correspondence. The official Hale family tree listed only one child: Victoria Anne Hale, born in 1988.
Yet household payroll records from 1994 included a tutor paid for “V.H. and E.H.” A pediatric invoice billed two vaccinations on the same morning. One patient name had been covered with correction fluid.
“You had a sister,” Grant said.
Victoria stared through the windows of her Manhattan apartment. “My mother fostered children sometimes.”
“The medical invoice lists the same insurance number.”
“Then someone made a clerical error.”
Grant placed a fire report on the table. In February 1996, a blaze destroyed the guesthouse at the family’s Connecticut estate. The report recorded one unidentified juvenile fatality. No DNA analysis was performed. Rebecca told the press the victim was the daughter of a domestic employee.
Victoria remembered smoke, sirens, and a pale ribbon lying in snow.
She remembered her father kneeling in front of her afterward.
“Your sister is gone,” William Hale had said. “You must never use her name again. It will hurt your mother.”
Grant noticed Victoria’s hand tightening.
“What was her name?”
“I told you. There was no sister.”
That afternoon, a foundation receptionist forwarded a voicemail from a child. The caller sounded young and frightened.
“My name is Tommy Reed. My mom says Victoria Hale has something that belongs to us.”
May you like
Behind his voice, a woman whispered, “Not yet.”
Then the line went dead.
