Chapter 6 - THE WOMAN NAMED ELIZABETH
Victoria read Emily's messages so many times that the words began to lose their shapes. Anna is not our mother. Elizabeth is. If you see them together, run.
The warning sounded impossible. Why would a person spend thirteen years switching the names of two women? What would that accomplish beyond turning both lives into a maze of false records?
Torres had a practical answer. “Sometimes an alias isn't meant to hide one person. It's meant to make evidence about one person appear to belong to another.”
They drove directly to Mara Chen's office. Mara set the Maine facility records beside the photograph and circled dates with a red pen. Anna Mercer had entered care eleven years earlier with documents supplied by Whitmore-affiliated attorneys. Elizabeth Morrow appeared five years afterward under a volunteer contract funded through an offshore charitable foundation.
“On paper,” Mara said, “Anna was a confused patient and Elizabeth was her visitor. But staff remember the visitor looking more fragile than the patient.”
“Did anyone ask why?” Victoria said.
“One nurse did. She was fired.”
Torres requested that nurse's contact information. They found her working at a hospice outside Portland. Her name was June Alvarez, and she agreed to speak on a recorded call.
“Elizabeth wasn't a volunteer,” June said. “She was the one who needed help. I saw her hands shake whenever a particular man visited. Anna would take her medication schedule and answer questions for her. They acted like sisters, but when the man was around, Anna became her keeper.”
“What man?” Torres asked.
“He always used the name Mr. Price. Tall, expensive coat, silver cuff links. He brought a doctor who checked Elizabeth's pulse but wouldn't tell us her diagnosis.”
“Do you remember the doctor's name?”
“Hale. Adrian Hale.”
Victoria gripped the edge of the desk. The same physician who insisted Eleanor was too unstable for visits had been supervising someone who looked like Catherine.
“Was Elizabeth afraid?” Victoria asked.
“Terrified. Once she whispered that if she told people her real name, her daughters would die. I reported it to management. They told me I had misunderstood a confused woman.”
June hesitated. “There was another thing. Elizabeth had a photograph hidden in her shoe. Two teenage girls on a boat. She kissed it whenever she thought she was alone.”
Victoria had no photographs of herself and Emily aboard the Belle after their mother's death. But the picture June described existed. Catherine had taken it the summer before the accident, using the camera's timer. One girl held a fishing rod; the other had a bandage on her knee.
“That was us,” Victoria whispered.
Mara ended the call gently. “We have more than resemblance now. We need to find her.”
The investigator produced a map of Whitmore property holdings. One rural facility in upstate New York had been purchased through a trust controlled by the same shell company that financed the Maine care home. It was called Alderbrook Retreat, advertised as a luxury rehabilitation center for private clients, though no public booking information existed.
Torres warned that they could not charge into private property on suspicion alone. She requested an emergency search warrant based on the evidence of abduction and forged medical records. Victoria wanted to go immediately. Instead, she returned to the estate to speak with Sophie.
The little girl was in the library, building a castle from old books. Elena sat nearby, mending a torn stuffed animal.
“Can you tell me more about the lady in the elevator?” Victoria asked.
Sophie nodded. “She had a blue sleeve. Her hand was shaking.”
“Did she tell you her name?”
“She said Auntie Liz. But Mommy called her something else.”
“What?”
Sophie frowned hard. “She called her Mom.”
Victoria pressed a hand to her mouth. “Are you sure?”
“Mommy hugged her and cried. Then another lady came and told them to hurry. The other lady looked like Auntie Liz, but she wore a red scarf and she was smiling when Mommy cried.”
“Did you hear what she said?”
“She said, ‘We can still do this the easy way.’”
Sophie pulled a crayon from beneath her leg and added a red scarf to the woman with the blank face in her drawing. Victoria felt the final piece slide into place. Emily had brought the woman who might be their mother to the house. Anna had followed. Then Eleanor disappeared, and soon after Emily did too.
“Did either lady see you?”
“The one in the red scarf did. She told me not to tell anybody.”
“Did she scare you?”
“A little. She called me by the name Mommy used when I was a baby.”
Victoria's heart skipped. “What name?”
“Sunflower.”
Only Emily and Catherine had used that nickname. Anna must have learned it from Catherine, perhaps by coercion. Nothing about the deception was accidental.
Victoria was still sitting beside Sophie when Priya called from a secure number. She had found a series of invoices labeled cognitive rehabilitation. They originated from Alderbrook Retreat and were billed to an Ashford subsidiary through a sham consulting contract.
“How much?” Victoria asked.
“Nearly four million over six years.”
“And who approved them?”
“Graham Pierce. Every quarter, without exception.”
This was no longer only Alexander's scheme. He had inherited or joined a machinery of concealment built by his father, with the family lawyer as its accountant and Dr. Hale as its medical shield.
Victoria sat down at her computer and wrote a personal statement documenting what she knew. She copied Torres, Mara, Priya, and the board's independent audit committee. She described the damaged wedding wall, Eleanor's rescue, the forged medical orders, and the unexplained company payments. At the bottom she wrote a line she had never expected to use in a professional communication: I believe my mother may still be alive and is being held against her will.
She hesitated over the send button. The sentence could ruin reputations and expose her family to public scrutiny. It could also be the first honest thing Ashford Development had said about Catherine's disappearance in thirteen years.
She clicked send.
Before pressing send, Victoria had attached a separate message for the company's employees. It explained that an independent review was beginning, that ordinary payroll and benefits would remain a priority, and that no one should be pressured to destroy documents or change records. She read the statement twice, remembering the frightened junior accountant who had quietly brought her evidence. Protecting people meant more than making speeches about loyalty. It meant making it possible for them to tell the truth without losing their livelihoods.
Priya answered from an encrypted chat. Thank you for saying that openly, she wrote. Some people are scared they'll be blamed for invoices they were ordered to process.
Victoria wrote back: Nobody will be punished for reporting concerns in good faith. If anyone threatens you, tell the investigators immediately.
It was a promise she intended to keep. The company her mother built might survive the fraud, or it might not. But Victoria would not preserve the family name by asking more frightened people to stay silent.
An hour later, Alexander called. She let it ring. He called again. Then a message arrived: You have no idea what you've just done to your father.
Victoria showed it to Torres.
“Keep it,” the detective said. “Don't answer.”
But a second message arrived from Richard's rehabilitation facility. The nurse reported that his private room had been entered during a staff shift change. His notebook was missing. He was safe, but someone had tried to remove his medication chart.
Victoria drove to him with a police escort. Richard sat awake, frightened and furious. When he saw her, he pointed to his lips, then toward a framed picture on the nightstand.
“Mom?” she asked.
He nodded. His hand made a shaky motion, two fingers crossing and separating. Victoria didn't understand until he reached for a fresh notebook and wrote: TWO WOMEN. ONE LIVED. ONE SIGNED.
“Who signed?”
He tapped the photograph of Catherine. Then he drew a line through the face and wrote ANNA.
Victoria could scarcely breathe. “Anna signed documents pretending to be Mom?”
Richard nodded. He wrote again, slowly: After the lake. Howard made me choose. Daughters or truth.
The words carried thirteen years of cowardice and fear. Victoria loved her father, but for the first time she was angry enough to see him clearly. He had known something of the fraud and had allowed his daughters to grow up grieving a woman who might have been alive.
“Why didn't you tell us?” she whispered.
Tears ran down his cheeks. He wrote: I thought the threat would end. Then I was too ashamed.
Before Victoria could answer, Torres called. The search warrant had been approved. A team was headed to Alderbrook Retreat.
“Do not go there yourself,” the detective said. “We don't know who's inside.”
Victoria looked at Richard, then at the photo of Catherine. She agreed to wait, though every nerve in her body demanded the opposite.
At 11:43 p.m., Torres sent a single update: Entered facility. Three staff detained. Medical rooms empty.
Five minutes later came a photograph. It showed a small bedroom with barred windows. On the wall someone had carved a series of lines, one for every month. Beneath them were three names: VICTORIA. EMILY. SOPHIE.
And below the names, written in a faint, almost trembling hand, was a sentence that brought Victoria to her knees.
May you like
I kept count because I knew you would come.
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