Chapter 8 - THE WOMAN BESIDE MY MOTHER
The photograph had been taken outside a hotel in Geneva.
My mother stood near the entrance wearing a pale gray coat. Time and distance had blurred the image, but I recognized the way she held her handbag beneath her left arm.
Eleanor Rollins had always kept her right hand free.
For shaking hands.
Opening doors.
Or defending herself.
The woman beside her was Celeste Varga, the European representative of the acquisition group that had paid Harrison to sabotage Project Aurora.
According to the photograph’s timestamp, they met three days before the plane crash that killed both my parents.
I enlarged the image until the pixels fractured.
My mother appeared tense.
Celeste appeared pleased.
A third figure was reflected in the glass behind them.
A man holding a camera.
“Someone wanted this meeting documented,” Leona said.
We were inside the secure conference room at Rollins Global. Justin sat opposite me, his eyes fixed on our mother’s face.
“Could the timestamp be altered?” he asked.
“Yes,” Leona replied. “But the original file includes location metadata consistent with the hotel.”
Justin leaned back.
“So Mom knew them.”
“That does not mean she worked with them,” I said.
He looked at me.
“You don’t know that.”
“No. I don’t.”
Those three words were harder to say than any accusation.
All my life, I had remembered my mother as the person who warned me about Harrison’s need for control. Her note had confirmed that memory.
But love often turns the dead into fixed objects.
We preserve the version that hurts least.
Leona displayed records from the hotel. Eleanor had checked in under her own name. Celeste used an alias linked to the same offshore network that later financed the attack on Rollins Global.
There was no record of my father entering the hotel.
“What was Mom doing in Geneva?” Justin asked.
“Officially?” Leona said. “Attending a foundation conference in Boston.”
Justin’s face tightened.
“She lied about the trip.”
The secure phone rang.
Federal investigator Naomi Chen had located the source of the anonymous messages.
Not the sender.
Only the routing method.
Each message had been transmitted through an emergency communications system used by international witness-protection teams and intelligence contractors.
“That system isn’t available to ordinary whistleblowers,” Chen said. “Someone with institutional access is helping your source.”
“Could the source be my mother?”
A pause followed.
“We have no evidence she survived the crash.”
“That wasn’t my question.”
“No,” Chen said quietly. “It wasn’t.”
After the call, Justin walked to the window.
“When Dad died, Harrison told us Mom’s remains were identified through jewelry.”
I remembered the pearl bracelet returned in a velvet evidence box.
The casket had remained sealed because of fire damage.
“What about dental records?” I asked.
Leona began searching.
The report appeared twelve minutes later.
Our father had been identified through dental comparison.
Our mother had not.
Her identification relied on the bracelet, her seat assignment, and the assumption that both passengers died.
Assumption.
A word capable of burying a living woman.
My phone vibrated.
A new anonymous message appeared.
Your mother discovered what Project Aurora was really designed to transport. Harrison discovered that she knew.
Beneath it was an address in Santa Fe.
May you like
And one instruction:
Come without the company. Bring Justin.
