“Found you where?”
“In foster care.”
I frowned.
“He visited me for the first time three years ago. He never told the social worker who he really was. He said he was helping investigate something about my family.”
“Christopher was an accountant.”
Sadie’s expression tightened.
“No, he wasn’t.”
My heart lurched.
“Yes, he was.”
“He worked as an accountant,” she said carefully. “But that wasn’t how he knew my mother.”
I stood again.
“Your mother?”
Sadie reached into the grocery bag she had carried into our house weeks earlier.
From beneath a folded sweatshirt, she removed a thick brown envelope.
Christopher’s handwriting covered the front.
FOR CLAIRE.
My name.
Underneath it, in smaller letters:
ONLY AFTER I’M GONE.
I stared at those words until they blurred.
“Open it,” Sadie whispered.
Inside were photographs.
Documents.
Newspaper clippings.
And a letter.
I pulled out the first photograph.
Christopher was standing beside a woman I had never seen before.
They looked much younger.
Maybe twenty-five.
The woman had dark hair, sharp cheekbones, and a smile that seemed strangely familiar.
Then I looked at Sadie.
Same eyes.
Same chin.
Same slight crookedness at the corner of her mouth.
“That’s your mother.”
Sadie nodded.
“Her name was Rebecca.”
The photograph trembled in my fingers.
“How did Christopher know her?”
Sadie didn’t answer.
Instead, she pointed toward the papers.
I found a newspaper clipping.
LOCAL WOMAN KILLED IN APPARENT HOUSE FIRE.
