Chapter 4 - Brent's Sister
Brent laughed.
It sounded almost hysterical.
“My dad had a daughter with you?”
Laura nodded.
“Before he married your mother.”
Daniel had been seventeen.
Laura sixteen.
Two terrified teenagers.
Laura's parents forced Daniel away.
Daniel's parents threatened legal action if Laura publicly identified him as Rebecca's father.
For years, Rebecca knew only that her father was someone nearby who couldn't acknowledge her.
When she turned sixteen, she discovered the truth herself.
She confronted Daniel.
By then he was married.
Brent was an infant.
“She wanted him to acknowledge her,” Laura said.
“He refused?”
“At first.”
Daniel feared destroying his marriage and career.
But secretly, father and daughter began meeting.
Rebecca photographed everything.
Daniel eventually promised that after she graduated, he would tell the truth.
She never reached graduation.
Aaron looked at Brent.
“So Rebecca was your half-sister.”
Brent sat down on the curb.
His cruelty suddenly looked childish and pathetic against the reality.
“I didn't know.”
Laura believed him.
Then Aaron asked the obvious question.
“If Rebecca survived the crash, where did she go?”
Laura didn't know.
But Michael might have.
Aaron returned to the cedar box.
Beneath the lining, they found a memory card.
Rebecca's photographs.
Hundreds.
Most ordinary.
Friends.
School.
Laura cooking.
Daniel meeting her secretly.
Then photographs from the night of the crash.
Rebecca had been documenting something.
A school fundraiser.
Daniel arguing with another teacher.
Michael carrying boxes from an office.
And a young woman Aaron didn't recognize.
Same red dress.
Not Rebecca.
Laura stared.
“That's Hannah Pierce.”
Rebecca's best friend.
Hannah disappeared the same night Rebecca supposedly died.
Police assumed she ran away after the crash because her family was troubled.
Aaron understood first.
“The body.”
Laura covered her mouth.
If Hannah wore Rebecca's dress—
and Hannah disappeared—
then perhaps Hannah died in Rebecca's place.
Brent whispered:
“My dad knew.”
Maybe.
Then one final photograph loaded.
Taken approximately twenty minutes after the crash.
Rebecca.
Alive.
Standing beside Michael's truck.
Michael was opening the passenger door for her.
Aaron stared at his dead father.
“He saved her.”
Laura began crying.
“Then why didn't he bring her home?”
The answer was hidden inside the photograph.
Behind Rebecca stood another man.
Laura enlarged the image.
Her expression changed completely.
Aaron noticed.
“Who is that?”
Laura whispered:
“My father.”
Aaron's grandfather, Henry Lawson.
The man who supposedly died twelve years ago.
May you like
And beneath the photograph, Rebecca had typed:
IF ANYTHING HAPPENS TO HANNAH, GRANDPA DID IT.
