Chapter 2 - THE WOMAN BEHIND THE SECOND WALL.
Staff opened the second concealed door while Clara remained behind Mr. Hale.
Inside sat a middle-aged woman in a plain gray dress, conscious and frightened. She wore the other half of Clara’s handmade wool scarf around her shoulders.
Victoria whispered, “Rebecca.”
Daniel stepped back as if he had seen a ghost.
Clara looked between them. “Who is she?”
Margaret’s answer shook the room.
“She is your real mother.”
Victoria snapped that Rebecca had abandoned Clara after birth. Rebecca lifted one trembling hand.
“I was a live-in caregiver in this house. Daniel promised to acknowledge our child, then his family called me unstable.”
Clara turned toward Victoria.
“You told me you gave birth to me.”
Victoria answered that raising a child made her a mother.
Rebecca replied, “Then why did you need my name erased?”
Mr. Hale found clinic invoices showing Rebecca had been held under a false psychiatric guardianship paid by the family trust.
The final invoice carried Daniel’s signature.
He stared at it.
“I never approved this.”
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Margaret opened another page.
The witness was Victoria’s father, Judge William Cross.
