Chapter 4 - The Sister Who Came Back for Christmas
Arthur found Caroline Bell in Milwaukee.
She was seventy, silver-haired, and so similar to Margaret that Arthur
stopped on the porch.
“You look old,” Caroline said.
“You look alive.”
Inside her modest house, paper snowflakes hung in every window.
Caroline told him Arthur’s father, Walter Bennett, had forced her away
decades earlier after she discovered Walter using the original
restaurant to hide money from creditors.
“Margaret eventually found me,” Caroline said. “She kept my secret
because I asked her to.”
“Everyone seems to think lying to me is an act of love.”
“Sometimes frightened people call secrecy protection.”
Caroline denied stealing from the Christmas Fund.
Before Arthur left, she gave him an old Christmas card from Margaret.
If Arthur ever asks about the fund, tell him the money was never the
real secret. The children were.
Back in Chicago, Arthur visited Lucy and Emily.
Lucy wore the red winter coat he brought her.
“Do I have to work for it?” she asked.
Arthur’s smile disappeared.
“No.”
“Nothing?”
“Nothing.”
She hugged him.
Emily then showed Arthur archived records. Margaret had created small
education trusts for children who once lived in foundation housing.
Vanessa and Derek had been draining dormant accounts.
One account belonged to Lucy.
The original deposit was made three days after her birth.
Depositor: Margaret Bennett.
Emily stared at the screen.
“That’s impossible. I never met Margaret.”
Then Lucy pulled an old photograph from her mother’s bag.
A younger Emily stood beside Margaret.
On the back:
Emily, Christmas 2007. She still doesn’t know who her father is.
Emily went pale.
“I don’t remember this.”
Arthur asked, “Who raised you?”
“My grandparents. They said my mother disappeared.”
Caroline’s story suddenly felt incomplete.
Arthur called her.
No answer.
Helen began checking sealed family records.
At midnight she called.
“Arthur, Emily is connected to your family.”
“How?”
“We need DNA to prove the exact line.”
Arthur looked toward the rehabilitation-center Christmas tree.
Lucy slept beside her mother.
May you like
Whether blood connected them or not, Arthur knew one thing already.
That child should never again have to earn dinner.
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