Chapter 3 - The Missing Nanny
The next morning Daniel found Lily’s former nanny.
Her name was Emily Ross.
She had worked for the Carters from Lily’s birth until six weeks earlier, when Vanessa told Daniel she had stolen jewelry.
Daniel had never spoken directly to Emily after the accusation.
Now he regretted that too.
Raymond located her living with her sister in Queens.
When Daniel called, Emily almost hung up.
“I didn’t steal anything.”
“I know.”
Silence.
Then crying.
Daniel closed his eyes.
“I need you to tell me what happened to Lily.”
Emily agreed to meet only if Raymond came and Vanessa didn’t know.
They met in a quiet café.
Emily looked exhausted.
“I tried to tell you.”
“When?”
“The night before Vanessa fired me. I called your office three times.”
Daniel remembered his assistant saying Vanessa had handled a “staff dispute.”
Emily placed her phone on the table.
“I started recording because no one believed me.”
Daniel stared at the screen.
The first clip showed Vanessa yanking a stuffed rabbit from Lily’s hands while Margaret watched.
The second captured Margaret telling Emily not to let Lily into Thomas’s study.
Then came the clip that changed everything.
Vanessa stood in the hallway arguing with Margaret.
Their voices were low but clear.
“We need the original before Daniel finds it.”
Margaret replied, “Then stop wasting time and search the child’s things.”
Emily had recorded only twenty-three seconds.
But it was enough.
“What original?” Daniel asked.
“I don’t know.”
Emily swallowed.
“But after Mr. Carter died, your mother started asking whether Thomas had ever given me an envelope, a key, anything for Lily.”
Daniel leaned back.
His father.
Again.
Emily continued.
“One night I saw Vanessa coming out of Thomas’s study. She had papers in her hand. I told her I was going to tell you.”
“And then you were accused of theft.”
Emily nodded.
Daniel’s shame became anger.
But Emily wasn’t finished.
“There’s something else.”
She reached into her purse and produced a photograph.
Thomas Carter sat in the garden holding Lily when she was barely six months old.
Beside him stood a man Daniel recognized.
Arthur Brennan.
Thomas’s estate attorney.
On the back, Thomas had written a date.
Three days before his death.
Daniel’s pulse jumped.
“Arthur told us after Dad died that the estate was simple.”
Emily shook her head.
“I heard your father tell him, ‘Make certain Daniel sees the second document if Margaret contests Lily’s place.’”
Second document.
Daniel immediately called Arthur Brennan.
Disconnected number.
Raymond searched.
Arthur had closed his practice fourteen months earlier and moved to Vermont.
Without notifying Daniel.
That made no sense.
Unless Arthur had been running from something.
Daniel looked at Emily.
“Why didn’t you keep fighting to tell me?”
Her eyes filled.
“Because Vanessa threatened my sister’s immigration sponsorship at work and Margaret told me no one would believe a nanny over the Carter family.”
Daniel looked down.
“They were right about one thing.”
Emily waited.
“I didn’t believe you.”
May you like
He forced himself to meet her eyes.
“That changes today.”
