Chapter 6
Richard Vale arrived by helicopter.
That sounds dramatic.
It was.
The entire neighborhood came outside when the black aircraft landed on the private field behind the Harris estate.
Margaret would have loved the attention if she had not been in a holding cell.
I stood in the guest room wearing dry clothes that did not feel like mine.
Daniel waited downstairs.
Adrian came to the door.
“He’s here.”
My legs would not move.
For twenty-five years, I had imagined my birth parents in quiet ways.
A woman with sad eyes.
A man who never knew.
Sometimes I was angry.
Sometimes curious.
Mostly, I buried the questions because my adoptive parents loved me enough that wondering felt like betrayal.
Now the answer was downstairs.
A billionaire.
A stranger.
My father.
I walked down slowly.
Richard Vale stood in the foyer.
Tall.
Silver-haired.
Impossibly still.
The kind of man whose silence made rooms behave.
Then he saw me.
His face broke.
Not a little.
Completely.
“Emily.”
He said my name like he had been carrying it in his mouth for decades.
I stopped on the last stair.
“I don’t know what to call you.”
His eyes filled.
“You don’t have to call me anything today.”
That helped.
He stepped closer, then stopped.
Waiting.
Asking without words.
I walked the rest of the way down.
He opened the velvet box.
Inside the second locket glowed against white silk.
“Your mother wore this one,” he said. “Yours was made to match hers.”
My throat closed.
“My mother?”
He nodded.
“Isabel.”
“Is she…”
His face crumpled again.
“She died ten years ago. But she never stopped searching.”
The words hit me harder than the water.
My birth mother had died looking for me.
I covered my mouth.
Richard’s voice shook.
“She believed you were alive. Everyone told her grief had made her irrational. She hired investigators until doctors told her stress would kill her.”
I whispered, “I was in Ohio.”
“I know.”
He looked devastated.
“I should have found you.”
I shook my head, crying now.
“You didn’t lose me.”
His eyes lifted.
“Someone took me.”
May you like
For the first time, Richard Vale did not look like a billionaire.
He looked like a father who had missed twenty-five birthdays.
