Chapter 1 - The Slap in the Rain
Margaret Whitmore slapped the little girl before she even understood what had happened.
The first blow snapped Emma’s face sideways.
The second sent the seven-year-old stumbling backward onto the rain-blackened pavement of the crowded Riverside Bus Terminal.
A bus thundered past the curb.
Dirty water exploded beside Emma as she landed on one knee.
Her homemade recycling cart tipped over with a metallic crash.
Plastic bottles rolled beneath benches. Crushed cans spun toward the bus lane. Wet cardboard slapped against the pavement.
People stopped.
A woman gasped.
Someone raised a phone.
Margaret barely noticed.
Coffee dripped from the front of her expensive navy-blue wool coat.
“What were you thinking?” she demanded.
Emma pressed one trembling hand to her cheek.
Long brown hair stuck to her face. Her oversized red coat looked as if it belonged to a child twice her size. Water had soaked through her old sneakers.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered. “The wheel got stuck.”
“You ran straight into me.”
“I didn’t mean to.”
Margaret’s anger was already beginning to cool when Emma dropped to her knees and started gathering bottles.
Not crying.
Not protesting.
Just moving quickly, desperately, as though punishment would become worse if she stopped.
That disturbed Margaret more than tears would have.
A security guard approached.
“Ma’am, is everything—”
CLINK.
A crushed aluminum can rolled beneath Margaret’s polished shoe and struck something silver.
Margaret looked down.
A necklace lay in a shallow stream of rainwater.
Its pendant was shaped like half a silver sun.
Margaret stopped breathing.
“No.”
The guard frowned. “Ma’am?”
Margaret bent slowly and picked it up.
Her fingers shook.
Across one edge was a tiny diagonal scratch.
Five years vanished.
She saw a sunlit nursery.
A two-year-old girl sitting on a carpet.
Her son Daniel laughing.
And Margaret fastening that same necklace around the toddler’s neck.
The scratch had appeared one week later when the pendant caught against the metal clasp of Emma’s stroller.
Margaret had spent years remembering it.
Years wishing she could forget.
She tore open her leather handbag, pulled out a worn wallet and removed the photograph she carried behind her driver’s license.
Daniel was kneeling beside a smiling toddler.
Around the toddler’s neck hung the silver half-sun.
Margaret looked at the photograph.
Then the necklace.
Then the soaked child.
Emma had stopped gathering cans.
She was watching Margaret with frightened suspicion.
“Where did you get this?” Margaret asked.
Emma flinched.
The reaction hit Margaret like a blade.
“I’ve always had it.”
Margaret stepped closer.
Emma backed away.
“Don’t.”
Margaret froze.
Emma pushed wet hair behind her left ear.
A small curved birthmark showed just beneath the hairline.
Margaret’s knees nearly failed.
The same mark appeared in the photograph.
“Oh, God.”
“What?”
Margaret lowered herself onto the pavement, ignoring the rain soaking through her stockings.
“What is your name?”
The girl’s expression hardened.
“Emma.”
The terminal disappeared.
Margaret heard nothing except blood pounding in her ears.
Five years ago Daniel Whitmore had died after his car crossed a guardrail north of Manhattan.
Seventy-two hours later, his widow Laura and their two-year-old daughter Emma disappeared.
The police found Laura’s abandoned vehicle six weeks later near Albany.
There had been no bodies.
No confirmed sightings.
Eventually investigators believed Laura had fled.
Margaret had spent hundreds of thousands of dollars searching.
Then the tips stopped.
The detectives changed.
Hope became humiliation.
Humiliation became grief.
And now Emma Whitmore was kneeling in front of her, soaked, starving-looking, collecting bottles in a bus terminal.
Margaret held the photograph beside Emma’s face.
Same gray-green eyes.
Same slightly crooked left eyebrow.
Same birthmark.
Margaret’s voice broke.
“Emma.”
The girl stiffened.
“How do you know my name?”
Margaret lifted a hand toward her, then remembered what that hand had just done.
She lowered it.
“I think…”
Her throat closed.
“I think I’m your grandmother.”
Emma stared.
The security guard stared.
Three passengers nearby had stopped pretending not to listen.
Margaret forced the words out.
“You’re my granddaughter.”
Emma looked from Margaret to the photograph.
For one terrible moment, Margaret expected relief.
Instead Emma’s eyes became guarded.
“My grandma’s dead.”
Margaret went cold.
“Who told you that?”
“My mom.”
“Laura?”
Emma’s face changed.
Margaret knew instantly she had said too much.
“Where is your mother?”
Emma hugged herself.
“I’m not supposed to tell strangers things.”
“I’m not a stranger.”
“You hit me.”
Margaret had no answer.
The security guard quietly said, “Ma’am, we need to go inside.”
Then a woman’s voice cut through the rain.
“Emma!”
A thin woman in a green plastic raincoat came running across the terminal.
Emma jumped up.
“Aunt Janice!”
Janice Pike seized Emma by the shoulders and pulled her behind her.
Then she saw Margaret.
Her face drained.
“You.”
Margaret stood slowly.
“You know who I am.”
Janice grabbed the recycling cart.
“Come on, Emma.”
“No,” Margaret said.
Janice stared at her.
Margaret held up the necklace.
“You are not taking her anywhere until someone explains why my granddaughter has been missing for five years.”
Janice’s fear hardened into contempt.
“Your granddaughter?”
“Yes.”
Janice laughed once.
“You rich people really do think you can buy reality.”
Emma whispered, “Aunt Janice…”
“Quiet.”
Margaret’s eyes narrowed.
“Don’t speak to her that way.”
Janice leaned closer.
“You lost the right to give orders when you put your hands on her.”
The words landed cleanly because they were true.
Phones were still recording.
Margaret lowered her voice.
“Where is Laura?”
Janice hesitated.
That hesitation frightened Margaret more than any answer.
“Where is my daughter-in-law?”
Janice looked at Emma.
Then at the security guard.
Finally she said, “Westchester County Correctional Facility.”
Margaret stared.
“What?”
Emma’s chin began trembling.
Janice gave Margaret a bitter smile.
“Laura Whitmore is in jail.”
“For what?”
Janice’s smile widened.
“For stealing from you.”
Margaret felt the world tilt.
“That’s impossible.”
“Apparently your son Andrew didn’t think so.”
Margaret went still.
“My son?”
Janice pulled Emma away.
Before turning, Emma looked back at Margaret.
There was no joy in her face.
Only fear.
Then she said something so softly Margaret almost missed it.
“Aunt Janice told me Uncle Andrew said never to let you find me.”
Margaret’s grip tightened around the silver sun.
May you like
And for the first time in five years, grief gave way to something far more dangerous.
Suspicion.
