Chapter 5 - The Woman in the Photograph
Taylor checked into a small hotel near her office.
Colin called eleven times.
She answered the twelfth.
“Come home,” he said.
“Which home?”
“My mother is calmer.”
“That wasn’t my question.”
Silence.
Taylor sat beside her laptop.
On the screen was a scanned deed from seventeen years earlier.
The mansion had been transferred to the Morgan Family Preservation Trust.
The trust’s original beneficiary was Margaret Ellis Morgan—Colin’s grandmother.
Upon Margaret’s death, control was supposed to pass equally to her two grandchildren.
Colin Morgan.
And Sarah Morgan Hayes.
Taylor had never heard of Sarah.
“Do you have a sister?” she asked.
Colin stopped breathing for a moment.
“No.”
“The trust says you do.”
“My aunt had a daughter.”
“Where is she?”
“I don’t know.”
“Why?”
Colin’s voice dropped.
“My mother said Sarah stole money from the family and disappeared.”
Taylor opened another file.
Sarah had not disappeared.
She had signed hospital records in Ohio only six months earlier.
Taylor turned toward the wedding photograph resting on the hotel desk.
In the background, beside the ballroom door, stood a gray-haired catering manager whom Taylor had seen watching Tabitha all evening.
The woman had cried when Taylor was ordered to serve the table.
At the time, Taylor assumed she was emotional about the wedding.
Now she enlarged the photograph.
The woman had the same blue eyes as Colin.
Taylor called the catering company.
The manager’s name was Sarah Hayes.
May you like
And she had personally requested to work the Morgan wedding.
👉 The forgotten Morgan heir had been inside the ballroom—and Tabitha had recognized her.
