Then the handwriting changed.
Less steady.
There is something else you need to know.
Chloe came to see me.
I stopped breathing.
Upstairs, a floorboard creaked.
She came alone, six weeks ago.
She stood on the porch for nearly twenty minutes before she knocked.
She told me about the baby.
She also told me your parents were making plans for this house.
I looked toward the staircase.
Chloe had warned him.
The sister who had signed the lie.
The sister who had claimed his bedroom.
The sister I had spent seventeen years imagining as the child they loved instead.
I read on.
She was frightened, and she asked me for money.
I told her I would help her make a plan, but I wouldn’t give her money to carry back to Richard and Elaine.
She left angry.
Then she came back the following week.
That time, she brought copies of the papers.
