Chapter 6 - My Mother’s Recording
The USB held one audio file.
My mother’s voice.
Weak.
But clear.
“Ryan, I met Emily Dawson today.”
I closed my eyes.
Mom continued.
“She has a little girl named Sophie.”
Pause.
“I looked at that child, and I saw you.”
My throat tightened.
Mom explained that Emily contacted her after failing to reach me.
Mom met Sophie.
She took photographs.
She even collected a cheek swab from Sophie with Emily’s consent.
Not for some secret test.
To preserve the possibility.
Mom then confronted Claire.
The audio changed.
A second recording.
Claire’s voice.
“You stay out of this.”
Mom:
“He has a daughter.”
Claire:
“He has Ethan.”
“He can have both.”
“No.”
That one word made everyone in the room go still.
Mom asked:
“What are you afraid of?”
Claire replied:
“That he’ll look at Sophie and realize he should’ve been with Emily all along.”
There it was.
Jealousy.
Raw.
I expected that to be the worst part.
It wasn’t.
Mom said:
“I’m telling Ryan.”
Claire answered:
“If you do, I’ll make sure he thinks Emily is after his money.”
My mother laughed.
“You’ve already forged things, haven’t you?”
Silence.
Then Claire:
“You can’t prove anything.”
Mom had proven enough to make investigators dig deeper.
The USB also contained copies of early emails.
Real emails from Emily to me.
Forwarded automatically into an old family server my mother still had access to.
Emily had tried.
Repeatedly.
Claire had intercepted or deleted them from my account.
The lie was documented.
But my mother died before giving me the drive.
Her safe-deposit instructions required release only if I personally requested the box.
I never knew it existed.
Until now.
Sophie’s paternity test came back two days later.
99.99%.
My daughter.
I sat beside her hospital bed.
She was coloring.
She looked up.
“Are you really my daddy?”
I couldn’t speak for a second.
Then I knelt.
“Yes.”
She studied my face.
“Did you forget me?”
That question nearly destroyed me.
“No, sweetheart.”
“Mommy said you didn’t know.”
“She was right.”
“Claire said you didn’t want me.”
I swallowed hard.
“Claire lied.”
Sophie started crying.
So did I.
“I would’ve come.”
She crawled into my arms.
Across the room, Ethan smiled through tears.
Then Sophie whispered something against my shirt.
“Claire said Mommy was gone because she wouldn’t stop looking for me.”
I froze.
“Gone where?”
Sophie pointed toward Claire’s old phone sitting in an evidence bag.
“She called someone.”
“Who?”
“A man named Uncle Mark.”
I knew only one Mark in Claire’s life.
Her older brother.
May you like
Mark Bennett.
A private investigator.
