Chapter 9 - What Lily Saw
Lily had been drawing horses.
That seemed unimportant.
Then Victoria showed Adrian six drawings from Lily’s school notebook.
Ashford Manor.
The glass corridor.
A woman.
A blue envelope.
And a man with a cane.
“Who is he?”
Lily called him:
Grandpa Tom.
Adrian felt cold.
Thomas Ashford.
Had Thomas been inside the manor?
Eleanor denied it.
Lily insisted.
“He came when Grandma was sleeping.”
“When?”
“Before Mommy went away.”
Victoria explained.
Three weeks earlier, Lily woke at night.
Came downstairs for water.
Saw Eleanor speaking to an elderly man in the glass corridor.
Man with white hair.
Cane.
He gave Eleanor a blue envelope.
Then touched Lily’s head and said:
“You have Rebecca’s eyes.”
Lily remembered.
Eleanor panicked.
Told Lily she dreamed it.
Then became increasingly strict.
Watching where Lily went.
Keeping her away from the library.
The cage incident was not simply about mud.
Lily had come home with dirt on her shoes because she had been behind the old greenhouse.
Why?
Thomas had told her something that night.
“Go where the glass breaks when the moon shines.”
Childlike riddle.
Old greenhouse had broken panes.
Lily went looking.
Eleanor saw mud.
Understood where she had been.
Panic became cruelty.
Adrian stared at his mother.
“You thought she found something.”
Eleanor cried.
“Yes.”
“What?”
“The envelope.”
“Which one?”
“Thomas hid another.”
Now there were multiple blue envelopes.
Thomas had been creating them.
Evidence packets.
One for Victoria.
One for Eleanor.
One hidden.
Why?
Insurance.
Then Lily remembered she found a blue corner sticking out beneath a loose greenhouse brick.
But she did not take it.
Someone else did.
Who?
Footprints.
Adult.
Then Mrs. Bell admitted seeing someone near the greenhouse.
Victoria.
Victoria froze.
“Yes.”
She took it.
“What was inside?”
She looked at Eleanor.
Then at Adrian.
“A DNA report.”
Whose?
Lily’s.
Adrian’s anger rose.
Again with secret tests.
Victoria explained Thomas arranged it without Lily’s direct sample using discarded material from a hairbrush.
Unethical.
Potentially illegal.
But done.
Result:
Lily was biologically related to Thomas.
Expected.
She descended from his daughter.
But the relationship was too close.
Not great-granddaughter.
Closer.
Adrian stared.
“How close?”
Victoria whispered:
“Granddaughter.”
Impossible.
Thomas’s daughter Sarah would have to be Lily’s mother.
But birth mother was Madeline.
Unless Madeline wasn't Sarah’s daughter.
Or records were wrong.
Then:
“Who is Lily’s biological mother?”
Victoria looked at Eleanor.
“Madeline Cross.”
“And?”
“Madeline isn’t Thomas’s granddaughter.”
“She’s his daughter.”
Silence.
Rebecca’s premature baby Sarah was not Madeline’s mother.
Sarah died childless.
Thomas later had another daughter.
Madeline.
With whom?
Victoria looked at Eleanor.
Adrian felt his stomach drop.
“No.”
Eleanor whispered:
“Adrian…”
“Tell me.”
May you like
Eleanor closed her eyes.
“I’m Madeline’s mother.”
