CHAPTER 4 THE DAUGHTER THEY CHOSE
By sunrise, the threat had become part of the police investigation.
Detective Morales assigned an officer outside my hospital room and another near the elevators. No visitor could enter without identification.
It should have made me feel safe.
It did not.
My mother had delivered a threat into a guarded hospital without being seen.
That meant someone was helping her.
The next morning, Dr. Patel removed the covering over my left eye.
At first, there was only darkness.
Then a dim gray blur appeared.
I saw the outline of her fingers.
The shape of Wyatt’s face.
A circle of light.
“It’s not clear,” I whispered.
“That’s expected,” she said. “Your vision may improve over weeks or months.”
“May?”
She placed a hand gently on my shoulder.
“The optic nerve survived. That is the most important thing.”
I turned toward Wyatt.
His face was doubled and distorted through my injured eye, but he was there.
He had not flinched when he saw the bandages.
He had not looked away from the bruising.
He had not become the man my mother promised he would become.
“You can see me?” he asked.
“Enough.”
He smiled, and I began to cry.
Not because I was afraid he would leave.
Because I finally understood that real love had never required me to earn it.
Later that afternoon, Detective Morales returned with news from Mercer Farm.
Officers had searched Rebecca’s grave and found nothing beneath the headstone.
But they discovered fresh tire tracks leading to an abandoned equipment shed.
Inside were burned papers, an empty gasoline container, and a metal box containing copies of Evelyn’s financial records.
The original will was not there.
One set of fingerprints covered the gasoline container.
Melanie’s.
“She’s been arrested for evidence destruction,” Morales said.
“And my mother?”
“Missing.”
“What about my father?”
“Still in jail. Bail was denied after prosecutors presented the video of the attack.”
I should have felt relief.
Instead, I pictured Linda alone somewhere, holding a document worth millions and blaming me for everything.
“Melanie won’t protect her forever,” Wyatt said.
“You don’t know my sister.”
“No,” he replied. “But I know selfish people. They’re loyal only while loyalty benefits them.”
He was right.
By evening, Melanie requested a lawyer and began negotiating.
She claimed the fire in the equipment shed was my mother’s idea. She admitted helping search the grandfather clock. She admitted delivering the threatening letter to a woman named Carol Pike, who worked nights in the hospital laundry department.
But she denied knowing where my mother had gone.
“Do you believe her?” I asked Morales.
“Partly.”
“What does she want?”
“Immunity.”
I laughed.
“She helped plan an attack that could have blinded me.”
“She says she didn’t know your father would use a brick.”
“She stood there while I bled.”
“I know.”
“She said, ‘I told you she wouldn’t move.’”
Morales said nothing.
“What does Melanie claim the plan was?”
“To frighten you into signing the waiver and ending your engagement.”
“And if I refused?”
“She says your mother told Richard to make sure Wyatt saw you differently afterward.”
The room became very still.
My father had not picked up the brick in sudden anger.
My mother had wanted him to damage my face.
She believed my value lived in my appearance.
She believed Wyatt loved me because I was attractive.
She believed destroying one would destroy the other.
“She wanted me disfigured,” I said.
Morales did not soften the truth.
“Yes.”
A knock sounded at the door.
An officer entered holding a tablet.
“Detective, you need to see this.”
The screen showed a live news report outside the Franklin County courthouse.
My mother stood at a cluster of microphones wearing sunglasses and a beige coat.
For a missing woman, she looked remarkably prepared.
A lawyer stood beside her.
The reporter announced that Linda Davis had called a press conference to “correct a false and dangerous narrative created by her estranged adopted daughter.”
I felt the room close around me.
Adopted daughter.
She had never used those words publicly.
Not once.
The reporter raised a microphone.
My mother removed her sunglasses and looked directly into the camera.
“My family has been living in fear of Sadie for years,” she said.
Her voice shook with practiced emotion.
“She has always been unstable, jealous, and obsessed with money. Last night, she arrived at our home with her fiancé and attacked her father after we refused to finance her extravagant wedding.”
Wyatt stood so fast his chair struck the wall.
“She’s lying.”
Onscreen, my mother dabbed at an eye with a folded tissue.
“Richard defended himself. That is all. Sadie’s injuries are tragic, but they were the result of her own violent behavior.”
The reporter asked about the video.
My mother’s lawyer stepped forward.
“The footage circulating online is incomplete and unlawfully obtained.”
It was not incomplete.
But my mother did not need the lie to survive forever.
She only needed it to spread faster than the truth.
Within minutes, social media filled with headlines.
WEALTHY FIANCÉ ACCUSED OF MANIPULATING FAMILY DISPUTE.
ADOPTED DAUGHTER CLAIMS SECRET MILLION-DOLLAR INHERITANCE.
MOTHER SAYS HOSPITALIZED WOMAN HAS HISTORY OF INSTABILITY.
Then came the photograph.
A reporter displayed an old image of me being escorted from my high school by two police officers.
I remembered that day.
I was sixteen.
Melanie had hidden stolen jewelry in my backpack after taking it from our mother’s bedroom.
Mom refused to press charges, but only after telling the school I had “emotional problems.”
The case disappeared.
The photograph remained.
“She planned this,” I whispered.
Wyatt took my hand.
“Then we answer with facts.”
“No.”
Everyone looked at me.
“If I respond emotionally, she wins. That’s what she wants. She wants me angry and desperate.”
“What do you want to do?” Morales asked.
“Nothing publicly.”
Wyatt frowned.
“Sadie—”
“I want the original will.”
That evening, Melanie agreed to speak with me by video call as part of her cooperation agreement.
Her lawyer sat beside her.
Detective Morales remained in the room.
When Melanie appeared on the screen, she looked smaller than I remembered.
Her expensive dress was gone.
She wore a gray jail uniform.
Her hair was tangled.
Still, there was no apology in her face.
“You look terrible,” she said.
Wyatt started toward the screen, but I stopped him.
“Where is Mom?”
“I don’t know.”
“You’re lying.”
Her mouth tightened.
“Why would I protect her? She left me to take the blame.”
“Because you think she’ll still choose you.”
“She always chose me.”
There it was.
The cruel little victory she had carried since childhood.
My mother chose her.
My father chose her.
Every holiday, every argument, every family decision ended with Melanie protected and me accused.
I leaned closer to the camera.
“She chose you because you were useful.”
Her expression changed.
“She told you Wyatt should marry you because she loved you?”
“He should have chosen me.”
“Why?”
“Because I’m better suited for his life.”
“You mean his money.”
Her eyes flashed.
“At least I wouldn’t embarrass him.”
“Did Mom tell you about Rebecca?”
Melanie’s face went blank.
That was answer enough.
“She knew I wasn’t her biological child,” I continued. “She knew Evelyn created a trust for me. And she never told you.”
“So?”
“So she made you believe you were the favorite while secretly building your entire life with money stolen from me.”
“That isn’t true.”
“Your car. Your tuition. Your apartment. Your trips. All of it came from Evelyn’s estate.”
Melanie looked at her lawyer.
He did not deny it.
For the first time, fear entered her face.
“Mom said the estate belonged to us.”
“She lied.”
“No.”
“She also said she would protect you. Where is she now?”
Melanie’s eyes filled with tears.
I did not feel satisfied.
I felt tired.
“Tell me where she took the will.”
“I don’t know.”
“Then tell me what you do know.”
She looked down.
For nearly a minute, no one spoke.
Finally, she whispered, “There was another key.”
Harold’s brass key opened the compartment in the clock.
But according to Melanie, the compartment contained only a note.
EVELYN’S VOICE WILL GUARD SADIE’S FUTURE.
My mother believed the message referred to a recording.
She had spent years searching for it.
Three days before the attack, she finally found an old cassette tape hidden inside a music box at Mercer Farm.
The recording contained Evelyn’s spoken instructions about the will.
“Where’s the tape?” I asked.
“Mom took it.”
“And the will?”
“Evelyn said it was where Rebecca heard her first song.”
Camille Rhodes, who had joined the call, gasped.
“The chapel.”
Everyone turned toward her.
“What chapel?” Morales asked.
“There was a small chapel on the Mercer property. Rebecca was baptized there. Evelyn sang to her during the ceremony.”
“Is it still standing?”
Camille’s face had gone pale.
“No. It was moved twenty years ago.”
“Moved where?”
She looked at me.
“To the grounds of St. Matthew’s Hospital.”
The same hospital where I was lying.
A cold wave moved through me.
The old chapel sat in the hospital garden, less than five hundred feet from my room.
At that exact moment, the lights flickered.
Once.
Twice.
Then everything went dark.
An alarm began to scream in the hallway.
The backup generator did not activate.
Someone shouted near the stairwell.
The officer outside my door drew his weapon.
Wyatt moved between me and the entrance.
May you like
And from the black hospital garden below came the unmistakable orange glow of fire.
The chapel was burning.
