Chapter 4: What Elaine Had Been Hiding
“Why is your seal on a document I never signed?” I asked.
Elaine did not answer immediately.
Martin struck the door with his palm.
“She’s confused,” he called.
“Don’t listen to her.”
Elaine’s voice sharpened through the speaker.
“Is my brother standing there?”
“Yes.”
“Lock the door.”
I pushed it shut and turned the deadbolt.
Martin stared through the glass, then pulled Sophie toward the car.
“Sophie, stay,” I called.
She hesitated, but Martin opened the passenger door.
“You wanted the truth,” I said.
“Don’t leave before you hear it.”
Sophie stepped away from him.
Elaine arrived twenty minutes later carrying a laptop inside a grocery bag.
She had never been warm to me, yet she took my shaking hand before she sat down.
“I should have come sooner,” she said.
“I was ashamed.”
“Of what?”
“Martin borrowed my work laptop three months ago.
He said he needed to print insurance papers.
My electronic notary seal was stored on it.”
Martin remained outside, watching through the window.
“You knew he used it?” Sophie asked.
“I suspected it after I received confirmation emails for documents I had never witnessed.”
“Why didn’t you tell anyone?”
Elaine looked at me.
“He said Helen had approved everything.
When I challenged him, he threatened to tell the licensing board I had willingly helped him.”
“You let me stand on that stage beside him,” I said.
Her eyes filled.
“Yes.”
Sophie folded her arms.
“Everyone keeps saying they did things for my sake.”
“I didn’t,” Elaine replied.
“I stayed quiet for mine.”
The honesty silenced the room.
Elaine opened the laptop.
“Last week I installed a program that saved activity whenever the lid was opened.
Martin borrowed it again yesterday.”
A recording appeared.
Martin’s voice filled the kitchen.
“Once Sophie humiliates Helen publicly, she’ll react.
We’ll say she became unstable and used money to control the girl.”
Another voice asked, “And the education fund?”
“We empty it before Helen understands what happened.”
Sophie’s face went white.
“That was planned?” she whispered.
I reached toward her, but she stepped back.
“Did you know?” I asked.
“No!
Dad told me you were trying to force your way into every photograph.
He said if I rejected you once, you’d finally understand your place.”
“My place?”
Her chin trembled.
“He said you only raised me because you couldn’t have children of your own.”
The words landed harder than her hand at the graduation ceremony.
“Is that what you believe?”
“You kept reminding me how much you paid for.”
“I reminded Martin.
Never you.”
“But you canceled the trip.”
“I stopped him from taking every dollar meant for your future.”
She pushed the laptop away.
“Maybe I was your future because you couldn’t have another one.”
I gripped the back of the chair.
The room blurred, and my knees gave way.
Elaine caught my shoulders before I reached the floor.
“Enough, Sophie,” she said.
“I watched Helen sit beside your hospital bed for six nights when Martin went fishing.
I watched her sell her mother’s jewelry to cover your school deposit.
Don’t repeat his poison as if it came from your own heart.”
Sophie’s mouth opened, but no sound came.
I wiped my face with both hands.
“I did want a child.
Then I met you, and I stopped asking life for anyone else.”
Sophie sank into the opposite chair.
“Why didn’t you ever tell me?”
“Because love isn’t a debt a child should have to repay.”
Elaine clicked on the recording again.
The second voice said, “You promised Helen would never hear about the other account.”
Sophie suddenly leaned over the laptop.
“Play that again.”
Elaine replayed it.
Sophie covered her mouth.
“I know that voice.”
“Who is it?” I asked.
She looked toward the window.
Martin’s car was already gone.
May you like
“That’s Claire,” she said.
“My biological mother.”
