I stared at
myself in the mirror.
Third child.
“What third child?”
“I don’t know.”
“Is there a name?”
“No.”
I heard her turn the page.
Then she gasped.
“What?”
Silence.
“Vanessa, what?”
“Oh my God.”
“Tell me.”
“There’s something written at the bottom.”
“What?”
“It’s not part of the letter. It looks like Natalie wrote it later.”
“Read it.”
Vanessa went quiet.
Then, very slowly, she said:
“It says, ‘I finally know who took the third baby.’”
My heart hammered.
“And?”
Vanessa inhaled sharply.
“She wrote a name.”
I gripped the phone.
“Whose?”
There was a knock at my hotel door.
Three slow knocks.
I froze.
Vanessa whispered my name through the phone.
Another knock.
Then a man’s voice came from the hallway.
“Claire?”
I knew that voice.
I hadn’t heard it in seven years.
But I knew it instantly.
My hand flew to my mouth.
