CHAPTER 11 — WHAT SARAH BELIEVED
Gavin refused to explain.
He demanded immunity first.
Federal prosecutors laughed at the request.
By then, Sterling Global was under investigation in four states. The stock had fallen thirty-eight percent. Two board members resigned before noon.
I no longer cared about the market.
I needed to know why Sarah believed Maya needed protection from me.
Thomas woke after surgery.
I went to the hospital.
He looked weaker than I had ever seen him.
“Gavin said Sarah feared me.”
Thomas closed his eyes.
“She did.”
“Why?”
“Because she thought you would choose the company.”
“I resigned.”
“She never got to see that.”
His words landed painfully.
Thomas explained that after Sarah discovered the fertility fraud, she tried to tell me three times.
Each time, Charles created a crisis at the company.
A factory accident.
A hostile takeover.
An investigation into overseas accounts.
I canceled dinners, left hospitals and postponed family conversations.
I told Sarah we would talk later.
Later never came.
“She saw your father pull you away whenever she got close to telling you,” Thomas said. “She believed you were avoiding the truth.”
“I didn’t know.”
“I know.”
“Did you?”
“Not all of it.”
Thomas reached for water.
“Sarah found evidence that Charles had used your private signature on documents before.”
“So she assumed I approved the embryo swap.”
“At first.”
“What changed?”
“She discovered the messages were forged.”
“Then why was she still afraid of me?”
Thomas looked directly at me.
“Because she knew you loved the company almost as much as you loved her.”
I wanted to deny it.
I couldn’t.
For years, I measured love by what I provided.
The estate.
The schools.
The security.
I never considered that presence was also protection.
Thomas handed me a key.
“Sarah rented a safe-deposit box.”
“Where?”
“First National on Madison.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“She made me promise.”
“You keep saying that as if promises excuse everything.”
“They don’t.”
Inside the box, I found Sarah’s journal.
The final pages were difficult to read.
She wrote about loving me.
Resenting me.
Missing me while I sat beside her checking emails.
She also wrote about Eleanor.
At first, Sarah pitied her.
Eleanor had been raised believing Charles would eventually recognize her. He never did.
When Sarah promised to help expose the truth, Eleanor trusted her.
Then Gavin convinced Eleanor that Sarah planned to reveal the fertility fraud while denying Eleanor any relationship with Maya.
Sarah admitted she had considered that.
Biology does not make her safe, she wrote.
The final entry was dated four days before Sarah died.
I told Richard’s mother everything tonight. She promised she would stop Charles.
My mother had died in a boating accident twelve years earlier.
At least, that was what I had been told.
Tucked behind the journal was a recent photograph.
An elderly woman stood outside a stone house near the coast.
The date on the back was six months ago.
May you like
The woman was my mother.
Alive.
