Chapter 5
The box contained a cassette tape, two photographs, and a baby ribbon.
No official records.
No legal certificates.
Nothing Beatrice could dismiss as paperwork.
Only memory.
The first photograph showed Camille sitting on a bed with a newborn in her arms.
Mariana stopped breathing.
Richard stood beside them.
Twenty-six years younger.
Smiling.
Alive inside the secret he had just tried to deny.
I handed the photograph to Mariana.
Her fingers shook.
“That’s me?”
Richard answered before I could.
“Yes.”
Beatrice turned on him.
“Coward.”
He looked exhausted.
Maybe he had been one for twenty-six years.
The second photograph was worse.
Camille stood outside the Sterling estate holding baby Mariana while Richard opened a car door.
On the back, Camille had written:
Going home to Alexander.
Mariana read it twice.
Then looked at Richard.
“She was going back.”
He closed his eyes.
Beatrice snapped, “She changed her mind.”
I stared at her.
“No.”
The handwriting on the photograph said otherwise.
I picked up the cassette.
Beatrice moved.
Rafe blocked her.
“Don’t play that.”
Her voice had changed.
Not commanding.
Afraid.
I put the tape into an old recorder brought from the cafe office.
Static.
Then Camille.
My sister.
Older than in the last memory I had of her.
Tired.
“Alexander, if Richard actually gives you this, then perhaps he finally remembered the promise he made.”
Richard sat down.
Camille continued.
“I’m safe for now. My daughter is safe. Her name is Mariana.”
Mariana covered her mouth.
I could not move.
“I know you’ve been searching. I know Father told you I ran because I was ashamed.”
My hands tightened.
“He lied.”
The room disappeared around me.
Camille explained that she had become pregnant during a family conflict my father refused to accept. He sent her away “for protection” until tempers cooled.
Richard Sterling swore to shelter her.
The arrangement was supposed to last weeks.
Then my father died.
And nobody came.
“I asked Richard to contact you.”
Richard looked at the floor.
“He said the roads were watched. He said Beatrice feared for Sebastian. He said one more week.”
Camille laughed weakly on the tape.
“One more week became years.”
Mariana whispered, “Years?”
Beatrice shut her eyes.
The tape continued.
“If Mariana grows up believing I abandoned her, then Richard broke his oath.”
I looked at him.
He did not deny it.
Camille’s final sentence broke something in Mariana.
“Tell my daughter I stayed because they told me leaving would put her in danger.”
Mariana began to cry.
May you like
Not because her mother had abandoned her.
Because after twenty-five years, she had finally learned her mother hadn’t.
