Chapter 1 - The Sentence Vanessa Shouldn’t Have Known
Vanessa had Lily gripped beneath both arms beside the stone overlook when Claire reached the wedding terrace.
The little girl was crying so hard she could barely get the words out.
“Tell them you want me,” Vanessa snapped. “Not her.”
Lily shook her head.
“I want Aunt Claire!”
Claire moved immediately.
She came up behind Vanessa, took Lily securely into her own arms, and carried her several steps away from the parapet before setting her down beside the stone wall.
“Don’t touch her again.”
Lily wrapped herself around Claire.
Vanessa’s face twisted.
“She is my daughter now.”
“No,” Claire said. “She is a four-year-old child. She doesn’t belong to whoever pressures her hardest.”
Vanessa lunged toward them.
Daniel came through the terrace doors at a run.
He caught his wife by the upper arms before she reached Claire and Lily.
“What were you doing with my daughter?”
Vanessa struggled once.
Then stopped.
Something strange happened.
Her panic vanished.
She looked directly at Daniel.
“Go ask Claire the real reason your wife disappeared.”
Daniel froze.
Claire looked up.
The mountain wind tugged at her ivory bridesmaid dress.
Lily clung tighter.
Daniel’s hands slowly loosened from Vanessa’s arms.
“What did you just say?”
Vanessa smiled.
Not triumphantly.
Almost desperately.
“You’ve spent three years believing Emma abandoned you.”
Daniel turned toward Claire.
His first wife.
Lily’s biological mother.
Claire’s older sister.
The woman who had vanished when Lily was thirteen months old.
Claire’s face had gone pale.
Daniel saw it.
“Claire?”
She said nothing.
That silence changed the entire terrace.
Vanessa noticed too.
“There.”
Her voice softened.
“Look at her.”
Daniel stared at Claire.
“What does she know?”
Claire stood with Lily against her chest.
“Not here.”
Daniel felt his stomach drop.
Vanessa laughed once.
“You still think I’m the only liar in this family?”
Daniel looked between them.
May you like
A minute earlier, he knew exactly who the danger was.
Now the woman who had protected Lily was visibly hiding something about the mother Daniel had spent three years believing chose never to come back.
