Chapter 5 - THE WOMAN WITH ELENA'S FACE
The next morning, Lucian stared at a photograph June had placed on his desk. It showed two teenage girls standing beside a red barn, both with dark hair, green eyes, and the same crooked smile. One girl wore a yellow sweater, the other a faded blue coat. Their faces were so alike that Lucian felt a physical jolt.
"Elena and her sister," June said. "Her name is Mara Marlowe. Born seven minutes after Elena."
"Why wasn't I told?"
"Their family records show Mara was placed in residential care at sixteen. Afterward, there are legal name changes, sealed medical records, and years with no public address."
Lucian examined the photograph. He had thought he knew every part of his wife's life. But there she was, standing beside a girl who looked like a reflection, sharing a smile from a childhood he had never been allowed to see.
"Did Elena know where Mara was?"
"We can't establish that yet. Margaret believes they reconnected shortly before Elena died. But there are reasons not to rush toward either woman."
"Such as?"
"Someone may be using the resemblance to deceive witnesses. And anyone genuinely recovering from a collision deserves medical privacy and protection, not a dramatic arrival at your front door."
Lucian nodded. He was beginning to appreciate that June's caution was not the enemy of action. It was the thing that kept a desperate man from making irreversible mistakes.
Across the house, Faye helped Rosie hang paper stars in the new guest suite. Rosie had decided each star needed a name. One was for Daddy, one for Faye, one for the purple horse that had recently lost a leg. The smallest was for Mama. Faye lifted it high enough for Rosie to reach and waited while she adjusted the string.
"Mama not gone," Rosie said suddenly.
Faye went still. "What makes you say that, sweetheart?"
Rosie pointed at the window. "Blue lady says Mama sleep."
Faye did not contradict her. Children grieving a parent sometimes imagined visits and held memories in ways adults could not decipher. She simply said, "You miss Mama very much."
Rosie nodded solemnly. "Daddy miss too."
Faye looked at the child, who was trying so hard to make sense of contradictions adults had placed around her. "He does."
At noon, June arranged for a child psychologist to meet Rosie in a familiar playroom, with Lucian nearby and no one demanding answers. The clinician explained that the immediate goal was not to turn Rosie into a witness. It was to help her feel safe and learn what support she needed after being confined and threatened. Lucian listened carefully. For once, his daughter did not need to serve an adult's investigation.
Meanwhile, the security audit produced a disturbing result. Someone had disabled an exterior camera overlooking the greenhouse for precisely eleven minutes on Christmas Eve. The override required an administrator-level account. Daniel Rourke possessed one. So did an outside contractor retained by Isabel. Neither fact established who used it, but the combination was hard to ignore.
Daniel had not returned to work after Lucian ordered him to surrender his credentials. Instead, his lawyer claimed he was taking medical leave. Lucian instructed the independent team to revoke all access immediately. Then he reminded his staff that nobody was to confront Daniel or follow him. He wanted a record that could survive scrutiny, not another act of intimidation.
At two, a courier arrived with a letter addressed to Faye. It was written on expensive cream paper. Inside was a single sentence: YOU ARE RUINING THE ONLY FAMILY THAT WOULD EVER HIRE YOU AGAIN.
She read it twice. Then she photographed the envelope, put it aside without touching it further, and called the officer assigned to her complaint. Her hands shook, but she completed the call.
Lucian found her afterward in the greenhouse. She was standing among winter orchids that Elena had once cultivated. The room smelled of wet soil and citrus. Faye stared at the bare spot where a blue scarf had been hanging earlier in the week.
"They want me to leave," she said.
"I know."
"I could lose my apartment if I don't find another position."
"I can offer you financial protection."
"And then what? I'll depend on you forever?"
He recognized the edge in her voice. "No. I didn't mean that."
"You have money and people who can solve problems with one phone call. I don't. But I need to keep making my own choices."
He nodded. "Tell me what support would help without taking that away."
She thought about it. "A written employment agreement. An independent reference. And protection for my brother that doesn't depend on whether I say what you want to hear."
"Done," he said. Then he corrected himself. "I'll ask June to arrange the agreement. You can review it with someone you choose."
Faye gave the smallest smile. "Better."
Their conversation was interrupted by a call from June. The records from Briar House had been released under court supervision. The former resident transferred that morning was a woman admitted as Mary Vale after a severe collision two years earlier. She had undergone extensive reconstructive treatment and required continuing neurological care. The facility could not establish her identity from its own admission records.
"Where was she transferred?" Lucian asked.
"To a private clinic in Vermont. We have a court order requiring the destination records to be preserved. The state investigators are sending a team."
"Can I go?"
"Not yet. If someone arranged her disappearance, arriving with your entourage might endanger her."
Lucian paced the length of the greenhouse. "I just need to know whether she's Elena."
"We all do," June said. "But identity must be established through reliable records, not resemblance alone."
An hour later, the Vermont clinic reported that Mary Vale had never arrived. The transport company claimed a mechanical failure had forced a route change. Its dispatch logs showed a stop at an abandoned service station, after which the vehicle's location signal disappeared. Authorities began searching the route.
Lucian gripped the edge of a potting bench until his knuckles whitened. Faye stayed beside him without offering empty reassurance.
"I'm going to lose her twice," he said.
"You don't know who was in that vehicle."
"I know. That's what makes it worse."
The police advised that media attention would complicate the search. A leaked story about a dead billionaire's wife possibly being alive could expose the patient even if she was somebody else. Lucian agreed to keep the matter private, though every instinct in him wanted to mobilize the city.
By evening, the transport vehicle was found in a wooded turnout. The driver had fled. The patient was missing. A thermal blanket lay folded on the passenger seat beside a hospital wristband labeled MARY VALE. There were no signs of a violent struggle, but investigators could not determine whether the woman had left voluntarily.
Lucian sat with June in the library reviewing the timeline. Mara Marlowe's name had appeared on an old insurance policy connected to the Cross Foundation. Elena's car accident occurred on a road used by the foundation's property managers. A private patient with an uncertain identity had been hidden in a facility funded through Cross-affiliated accounts. The connections were troubling. They were not yet conclusive.
At ten, a video arrived through an encrypted address. It showed a dim room, a wooden table, and a woman's hand resting beside a mug. A blue scarf lay across the chair behind her. The camera never showed her face.
A woman's voice said, "Lucian, if you're watching this, please don't bring Rosie to the coast. They think she's the last proof Elena left behind."
Lucian replayed the message. The voice sounded like Elena after a long illness. But he had already learned how easily sound and image could be manipulated. He forwarded the file to investigators instead of answering.
Five minutes later, Faye approached carrying Rosie's drawing from the morning. The child had added another figure beside Mama's star, a smaller person with a blue scarf and a dark mark on her forehead.
"Rosie says this is the lady who visited her before Christmas," Faye explained. "She calls her Other Mama."
Lucian looked at the mark. In the old photograph of Elena and Mara, Mara had a small birthmark above her left eyebrow. It was barely visible beneath her hair.
He realized that even if Elena had survived, the woman approaching his daughter might be someone else entirely.
Then June called again. The forensic team had verified that the voice in the video was not an obvious synthetic copy, though its source remained unknown. More importantly, the recording included a reflection in the glass of a picture frame. It showed the woman from behind, holding a photograph of Rosie.
On the back of that photograph was written a date: the day before the supposed crash.
May you like
And beneath it, in Elena's handwriting, were the words: IF THEY TAKE ME, MARA KNOWS WHY.
After Faye had gone, Lucian remained at the kitchen table with the picture in his hands. He remembered Elena describing trust as a door that could only open from the inside. Back then he had thought she was speaking about their marriage. He understood now that she might also have been warning him about the people he let into their home. The possibility that she was alive offered no excuse to forget the terrible fear his daughter had endured. Whatever happened next, protecting Rosie had to remain his first responsibility.
