Chapter 10 - The Baby Rachel Forgot
Rachel had only one child.
Caleb.
She had never been pregnant before him.
She knew that.
Margaret was wrong.
Then Margaret clarified.
“Not a baby you gave birth to.”
A child Evelyn had temporarily placed in Rachel's care when Rachel was nineteen.
Rachel remembered.
Sophie.
A four-year-old girl.
Evelyn claimed Sophie belonged to a friend experiencing illness.
Sophie lived with them for six weeks.
Rachel adored her.
Then one morning Sophie was gone.
Evelyn said her mother recovered.
Rachel accepted it.
Sophie had actually been Vanessa's daughter.
Rachel stopped breathing.
Vanessa had become pregnant at seventeen during treatment.
The father was another patient, nineteen-year-old Adam Cole.
Their relationship violated facility rules but was consensual according to both later accounts.
Evelyn panicked.
Vanessa wanted to keep the baby.
Evelyn insisted she was too unstable.
Sophie was born.
Vanessa spent months believing the child was in temporary foster care.
Evelyn secretly arranged an adoption.
Rachel had unknowingly cared for Sophie during a disruption in that placement.
“Why didn't Vanessa tell me?”
“She thought you knew.”
Rachel's stomach twisted.
Vanessa believed Rachel had cared for her daughter and then helped give her away.
For years.
That resentment had sat beneath everything.
Rachel understood suddenly why Vanessa mocked her parenting.
Why Caleb's presence sometimes seemed to irritate her.
Why watching Rachel raise a child freely hurt.
Still not an excuse.
But a wound.
“Where is Sophie?”
Alive.
Twenty.
Now named Sophie Bennett.
College student.
She had begun searching for biological relatives.
Evelyn learned that shortly before dying.
That was why she began preparing the trust documents.
She knew Sophie might return.
Vanessa did not know.
Rachel drove back to the mansion.
Vanessa was sitting alone beside the broken vase.
Rachel placed a photograph of Sophie on the table.
Vanessa looked at it.
Everything drained from her face.
“No.”
Rachel said nothing.
Vanessa touched the photograph.
“How?”
“She searched.”
Vanessa began shaking.
“Does she know?”
“That you're her mother? Not yet.”
Vanessa covered her mouth.
Then she looked toward the front door.
“I need to see her.”
“No.”
Vanessa stared.
Rachel continued:
“You don't get to storm into her life because you want relief.”
The words hurt.
They were also true.
Sophie deserved control over the reunion.
Vanessa nodded.
Then whispered:
“Does she know about you?”
Rachel frowned.
“She remembers you.”
Rachel's heart broke.
Sophie remembered the six weeks.
Remembered Rachel reading to her.
Remembered asking why she couldn't stay.
Rachel had forgotten almost everything.
Sophie hadn't.
Then Vanessa said:
“That's why I hated you.”
Rachel looked at her.
“I know.”
“No. You don't.”
Vanessa was crying now.
“I thought Mom gave my daughter to you first because she thought you'd be a better mother.”
Rachel sat opposite her.
For the first time since the vase shattered, neither sister shouted.
Then Vanessa asked:
“Does Caleb hate me?”
Rachel answered truthfully.
May you like
“He's scared of you.”
That hurt Vanessa more than hatred would have.
