PART 2 — THE WOMAN IN THE PHOTOGRAPH
I stared at the investigator.
“What does that mean?”
He didn’t answer immediately.
He opened the file.
The first page was a photograph.
A young woman.
Twenty-four.
Dark hair.
Hospital gown.
Her right leg covered by a surgical sheet.
I recognized her face.
Not because I’d met her.
Because I’d seen her before.
In my sister’s social media.
At a charity dinner.
Standing beside Celestine.
Smiling for photographs.
“Who is she?”
“Her name is Mara Bennett.”
He slid another document toward me.
“Twenty-four years old. Graduate student. She was injured six weeks ago.”
“How?”
“Car accident.”
I looked at the photograph again.
“What does this have to do with Celestine?”
He opened the next page.
“Celestine’s car.”
I stopped.
“What?”
“The vehicle that hit her belonged to your sister.”
I looked up.
“Was Celestine driving?”
“No.”
“Then who was?”
He turned the page.
“That’s where it gets interesting.”
A police report.
A witness statement.
A hospital admission.
And then a line highlighted in yellow.
Driver unidentified.
I frowned.
“You said the car belonged to Celestine.”
“It does.”
“So where is the driver?”
“That’s the problem.”
He leaned forward.
“Your sister told police the car had been stolen.”
I looked at the date.
Six weeks earlier.
“Was it?”
“No.”
“How do you know?”
“Because the security footage from your sister’s building shows Celestine getting into the car forty minutes before the accident.”
I felt something tighten in my chest.
“So she was driving.”
“Probably.”
“Probably?”
“We don’t have the complete footage.”
“Why not?”
“Because someone removed it.”
I looked at him.
“From where?”
“The building’s security system.”
“Who had access?”
He gave me a look.
“Your sister.”
I leaned back.
“So she hit this woman, lied about it, and now wants a million dollars?”
“Not exactly.”
“What am I missing?”
He opened another file.
“This woman, Mara, was not just hit.”
He placed a medical report in front of me.
“She suffered a spinal injury.”
I read the words twice.
“She’s paralyzed?”
“Possibly permanently.”
My stomach dropped.
“And Celestine wants the million to pay her?”
“No.”
He pointed to another document.
“Celestine wants the million because someone is threatening to expose what happened before the accident.”
I stared at him.
“What happened before?”
He slid over a photograph.
It was taken outside a private clinic.
Celestine stood beside Mara.
They weren’t smiling.
They were arguing.
I looked at the date.
Three days before the accident.
“What is this place?”
“A fertility clinic.”
I looked up.
“Why would they be there?”
“We don’t know.”
He handed me another document.
This one was a bank statement.
Several transfers.
All made from an account connected to my sister.
Payments to a private medical consultant.
Then another.
Then another.
The total was almost six hundred thousand dollars.
Over eighteen months.
I whispered:
“What was she buying?”
“We don’t know.”
“Then find out.”
“I already did.”
He pulled out one final page.
And this time his voice changed.
“Your sister wasn’t paying the clinic.”
He pointed at the recipient.
“She was paying Mara.”
I stared at the name.
“Why?”
“She was paying her every month.”
“How much?”
“Twenty thousand dollars.”
I sat perfectly still.
“For what?”
He looked at me.
“We believe Mara was a surrogate.”
The room seemed to tilt.
“For Celestine?”
“Yes.”
I looked at the accident photograph again.
Then at the hospital photograph.
Then back at the investigator.
“She was carrying my sister’s baby?”
“That’s what the records suggest.”
“Was the baby born?”
“No.”
I swallowed.
“What happened?”
“The accident.”
I closed my eyes.
A terrible silence filled the office.
Then I asked the question that had been sitting in the back of my mind.
“Why would my parents need a million dollars?”
The investigator reached into his briefcase.
He took out a USB drive.
“Because there’s a second person involved.”
“Who?”
“Your mother.”
My heart stopped.
He continued.
“Your mother visited Mara at the hospital three times.”
“When?”
“After the accident.”
“Why?”
“She offered her money.”
“How much?”
“One million dollars.”
I stared at him.
“So that’s where this came from.”
“Not exactly.”
He opened the final folder.
“She wasn’t offering Mara a settlement.”
“What was she offering?”
“To sign something.”
I looked at the document.
It was a legal agreement.
Confidentiality.
Non-disclosure.
No admission of liability.
And one sentence that made my hands go cold.
The undersigned agrees to surrender all rights relating to the unborn child.
I looked at the investigator.
“The baby survived?”
He nodded.
I couldn’t speak.
“But you said the baby wasn’t born.”
“It wasn’t.”
“Then what does this mean?”
He reached for another photograph.
An ultrasound.
A date.
A heartbeat.
I stared at it.
Then I looked at him.
“Where is the baby now?”
He didn’t answer.
“Where?”
“We’re still trying to find out.”
I stood up.
“Then find out faster.”
He nodded.
But before he could leave, my phone rang.
Unknown number.
I answered.
A woman’s voice whispered:
“Are you the sister?”
“Who is this?”
“My name is Mara.”
I froze.
The investigator looked at me.
Mara continued.
“Your sister told me you were the only person in your family who might actually listen.”
“What happened?”
“I can’t talk for long.”
“Tell me.”
There was a pause.
Then:
“Your sister wasn’t trying to kill me.”
I frowned.
“Then what was she trying to do?”
“She was trying to take my baby.”
My blood ran cold.
“What?”
“She wanted me to disappear after the birth.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know.”
“You must know something.”
“I know what I found in her house.”
“What?”
Mara started crying.
“A file.”
“What file?”
“Your name was on it.”
I couldn’t breathe.
“My name?”
“Yes.”
“What did it say?”
Her voice dropped.
“It said you were the reason your parents threw you out.”
I felt the room go silent.
“I already know why.”
“No.”
Mara whispered:
“You don’t.”
Then the call ended.
I stood there staring at my phone.
The investigator looked at me.
“What did she say?”
I couldn’t answer immediately.
Because for nineteen years I’d believed the story.
Cancer.
Amputation.
Embarrassment.
Debt.
Being thrown out.
I had built my entire life around surviving what my parents had done to me.
But suddenly one question appeared.
One I had never asked.
Why had they been so desperate to get rid of me at sixteen?
The investigator picked up his coat.
“We need to talk to Mara again.”
“No.”
He stopped.
I looked at him.
“First, we’re going to my parents’ house.”
“Why?”
I picked up my keys.
“Because I want to know what happened the night I was thrown out.”
And as I walked toward the door, my phone buzzed.
A text from an unknown number.
Just six words:
Your sister knows why you survived.