“Can you investigate Eleanor Carter?”
“I can try.”
“Do it quietly.”
Rebecca agreed.
As Alexander returned to his car, he received a text message from an unknown number.
It contained a single photograph.
Emily Carter stood outside a small house in a quiet California neighborhood.
Beside her stood an older woman with silver hair.
The caption read:
ASK EMILY WHY SHE LIED ABOUT HER MOTHER.
Alexander stared at the image.
If Eleanor Carter was supposed to be dead, then the woman standing beside Emily could not be her.
Unless the records were wrong.
Or Emily had been hiding a secret of her own.
He called Emily immediately.
She answered after the first ring.
“Alexander?”
“I need to ask you something about your mother.”
A long silence followed.
Then Emily spoke in a voice he had never heard from her before.
“Who sent you the photograph?”
Alexander’s heart began to race.
“You know about it?”
“Listen to me carefully. Don’t go to that house, and don’t tell your father where you’ve seen the photograph.”
“Why?”
“Because the woman in that picture isn’t my mother.”
“Then who is she?”
Emily took a shaky breath.
“My mother’s sister. Eleanor Carter.”
Alexander closed his eyes.
The name appeared to connect every loose thread in the investigation.
But Emily’s next words changed everything.
“Eleanor died twelve years ago,” she said. “And the woman in that photograph was buried under her name.”
