Chapter 12 - Evelyn Price's Warning
Evelyn Price chose a small hotel conference room for the meeting. She was seventy-two, with silver hair and a careful, deliberate manner. She arrived with an attorney and a leather folder.
“You have your mother's eyes,” she said when she saw Lydia.
Lydia looked down. “I wish I had known her.”
“So do I,” Evelyn replied.
Richard thanked her for coming. Evelyn opened the folder and placed photocopies of old agency correspondence on the table.
“The arrangement was never supposed to become a permanent adoption,” she explained. “Anna was ill, and there was a credible threat against the baby. She asked the agency to place Lydia with a family outside the Harrington circle until the danger passed.”
“Who threatened her?” Daniel asked.
“A man connected to your uncle's business. Anna believed he wanted a ledger that could expose a financial scheme.”
Richard frowned. “My uncle was dead by then.”
“He died later. At the time, he was very much alive.”
Evelyn showed them a temporary placement agreement. It did not contain Richard's signature. A separate document, later filed as final consent, carried a signature that looked like his but had been copied from an old business form.
“I never signed this,” Richard said.
“I believe you,” Evelyn replied. “Margaret told the agency you had authorized her to handle all family correspondence. She also provided letters that appeared to show you had refused contact with Anna.”
Richard shook his head. “Those letters were forged.”
Evelyn nodded. “We suspected that eventually. But the agency director accepted Margaret's explanation. She said you were emotionally unstable and that Anna was too ill to care for a child.”
Lydia stared at the documents. “Did my mother try to see me?”
“Once. She came to the agency when you were about four. Margaret arrived before the meeting and told Anna that the placement family had moved. That was not true.”
Lydia's eyes filled. “Why would she do that?”
Evelyn had no easy answer.
She then produced a sealed statement written by Anna. In it, Anna explained that she had discovered money missing from a charitable trust controlled by Richard's uncle. She had copied a ledger and intended to give it to an investigator. After that, someone began following her.
At the bottom, Anna had written: If I do not survive, please do not let the Harrington family turn my daughter into a bargaining chip.
Richard felt sick.
“Where is the ledger now?” he asked.
“Anna gave it to Margaret for safekeeping. Margaret told me she destroyed it.”
“Did you believe her?”
“No.”
Evelyn admitted that she had given a statement to an investigator years earlier, but the case had been closed. The investigator's name was Thomas Weller, a former consultant to the Harrington foundation.
Victoria, who had been reviewing the family's old accounts, found payments to a consulting company connected to Weller. They had continued for six years after the original investigation ended.
Martin advised them not to draw conclusions until the records were authenticated.
That evening, Lydia sat beside Anna's photograph.
“She never stopped trying,” Evelyn had told her.
Richard sat beside his daughter. “No. She didn't.”
“Did she know where I was?”
“She knew the family name, but not the address.”
Lydia held the photograph. “I don't know whether I'm angry or sad.”
“You can be both.”
Later, Martin called with another discovery. The storage unit listed on the receipt was still active, but the account had recently been transferred into a new name.
The new account holder was Thomas Weller.
Richard stared at the phone.
May you like
The man who had dismissed Anna's complaint had somehow become the custodian of the evidence that could reopen it.
And he had only recently moved the storage unit.
