Chapter 2 - THE WOMAN EVAN HAD BEEN VISITING IN SECRET
Her name was Abigail Hawthorne.
Evan’s older sister.
Alive.
Forty-three years old.
Living less than an hour away.
I sat at our kitchen table while Evan told me.
Maisie had finally fallen asleep upstairs.
Lenora was gone.
I had told her to leave.
She had actually obeyed.
That frightened me more than another argument would have.
Evan stared at his hands.
“I thought Abby died when I was ten.”
I stopped.
“What?”
“My parents told me she did.”
Abigail had been eighteen when she disappeared from the Hawthorne home.
Evan was nine.
A year later, Lenora told him Abigail had died after “getting into trouble” in Arizona.
There was no funeral.
No grave Evan ever saw.
He was a child.
He believed his mother.
“For twenty-four years?”
“Yes.”
“And then?”
“Dad died.”
Evan’s father, Martin, had died eighteen months earlier after a stroke.
While helping clear out his office, Evan found a Christmas card hidden behind old tax files.
The front showed a snowy church.
Inside:
Dad, I’m still here. I hope someday you answer. — Abby
It had been mailed seven years earlier.
Evan confronted Lenora.
She claimed Abigail was manipulative.
Unstable.
Dangerous.
Evan searched anyway.
He found his sister working at a small art-supply store in New Haven.
The first time he saw her, he sat in his car for forty minutes.
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I didn’t know how.”
“Try.”
He flinched.
Good.
I was furious enough to stop making his discomfort easier.
Evan had been meeting Abigail for six months.
Coffee.
Lunch.
Eventually weekend visits.
Three times, he took Maisie.
“You took our daughter to meet a woman I didn’t know existed?”
“She’s my sister.”
“That’s not an answer.”
“I know.”
“Did you tell Maisie to keep it secret?”
His pause was tiny.
Still enough.
My stomach dropped.
“What did you tell her?”
“That Abby was a special family friend and we shouldn’t tell Grandma yet.”
I stood.
“You asked our three-year-old to keep secrets from me?”
“Not from you.”
“Did Maisie understand that?”
He had no answer.
That hurt almost as much as Lenora throwing the rabbit.
Evan reached into his pocket.
He placed something on the table.
A photograph.
Recent.
Abigail sitting on a park bench.
Maisie beside her eating crackers.
The same silver rabbit pendant around Maisie’s neck.
“Abby gave it to her,” he said.
I stared at him.
“You told me it came from your grandmother.”
“I said it was family.”
I laughed once.
“Congratulations on technically not lying.”
Evan looked ashamed.
Then he said something I hadn’t expected.
“The pendant was Abigail’s.”
I looked toward the photograph Lenora had left behind.
“Obviously.”
“No.”
His voice lowered.
“I mean it was hers when she disappeared.”
That meant Lenora had recognized it the moment she saw Maisie.
And that explained why she had come to our house ready for war.
May you like
Not because Maisie didn’t belong.
Because Lenora knew someone had reopened a part of the family she had spent twenty-four years keeping closed.
