Chapter 3 - The room behind the chapel
Hawthorne Ridge had a bridal preparation room behind the chapel.
I locked myself inside.
Ethan came with me.
No Victoria.
No guests.
No phones.
I sat on a velvet bench wearing half a wedding dress.
Ethan crouched in front of me.
“I didn’t know.”
“About the missing baby?”
“I knew Mom had a daughter who disappeared.”
I stared.
“You knew?”
“Yes.”
“And you never told me?”
His face changed.
“I didn’t think it had anything to do with you.”
“That is not the point.”
“You’re right.”
“How does your mother have a missing baby for twenty-two years and you never mention it?”
He sat beside me.
“Because she doesn’t talk about Hannah.”
“But you knew.”
“Yes.”
“How much?”
“Not much.”
I laughed once.
It sounded ugly.
“Try.”
Ethan swallowed.
“Mom gave birth at St. Catherine’s Hospital in Providence. Hannah was three days old. There was an electrical problem in part of the maternity wing.”
I turned toward him.
“A fire?”
“Small electrical fire. Smoke. Evacuation.”
“And the baby?”
“Gone when things settled.”
“Gone how?”
“I don’t know.”
“You never asked?”
“I did when I was younger. Dad told me the police investigated for years.”
“Was she kidnapped?”
“That’s what they believed.”
I covered my face.
Ethan waited.
Then:
“My parents became foster parents years later. That’s how I came to them.”
“Because they lost her.”
“Partly.”
I lowered my hands.
“Does Victoria carry that bracelet every day?”
“Yes.”
“And the hospital tag?”
“I didn’t know it was inside.”
I looked toward the door.
“Why does the charm match my scar?”
“I don’t know.”
Neither of us said the next thing.
Because if Victoria was right, the woman who had just publicly humiliated me was my biological mother.
And I had almost married into her family without anyone knowing.
May you like
Not incest.
Still impossible.
