Eleanor looked at me for a long moment, searching my face. Then she glanced at the security guard.
“You can go, Marcus,” she told him quietly.
Marcus hesitated, eyeing me warily, then nodded and walked away down the hall. Eleanor turned back to me.
“Come with me,” she said.
She led me through a maze of corridors into a smaller, more intimate sitting room. Floor-to-ceiling windows overlooked an impeccably manicured garden. Eleanor gestured to a leather armchair. I sat, grateful to be off my legs, which felt like jelly. Eleanor remained standing, moving to the window to stare out at the greenery.
“Evelyn was the youngest,” Eleanor began, her back to me. “Our family, the Hart family, has money. A lot of it. My father built a pharmaceutical empire. When he died, I inherited the company. Evelyn was supposed to inherit a significant portion as well. But she never wanted any of it.”
She paused. “She hated the life we lived. The scrutiny, the expectations, the absolute control. She felt suffocated.”
Eleanor’s voice was flat and detached now, as if she were reciting facts from a textbook rather than talking about her lost sister.
“When she was twenty-two, she fell in love with someone,” Eleanor continued. “Someone our mother disapproved of. A working-class man. There was nothing wrong with him, really, but he wasn’t from our world. My mother forbade the relationship. She threatened to cut Evelyn off completely. There were arguments. Screaming matches that shook the house. And then, one night, Evelyn was just gone.”
She turned from the window to face me. Her eyes were wet again, but her jaw was set hard.
“She left a note. It said she couldn’t live as a puppet anymore. That she was sorry.”
Eleanor took a step toward me. “I thought she was selfish,” she admitted, her voice trembling. “I thought she threw away everything we had because she wanted to play at being normal. I was angry at her for years. But I never stopped looking. Because she was still my sister.”
My hands were clenched in my lap, knuckles turning white.
“Anna never told me any of this,” I said. “She said she didn’t have family. She said she grew up in foster care. I believed her.”
Eleanor’s expression softened slightly. “She was protecting you,” she said quietly. “If she had told you the truth, my family would have found her. Found you. And they would have made your life hell.”
“Your family,” I repeated, the concept sinking in. “You mean they would have come after us?”
“My mother would have,” Eleanor said. “She died two years ago. But yes. While she was alive, she would have done everything in her power to separate you. She viewed Evelyn—Anna—as a runaway asset. Not a daughter. Just something that belonged to the Hart name.”
I felt sick. Anna had lived her entire life with me under a false identity. She had severed ties with everyone she ever knew. And she had done it for me. For our life together.
“I have a son,” I said suddenly. The words just fell out.
“Lucas. He’s six years old.”
Eleanor’s carefully controlled face cracked. The mask fell away completely.
“You have a son,” she repeated softly. “Evelyn had a child.”
“He looks just like her,” I said, my voice breaking. “Same eyes. Same smile. He’s all I have left of her.”
Eleanor crossed the room and sat down heavily in the chair across from me. She covered her face with her hands, and her shoulders began to shake.
“I thought she was alive somewhere,” Eleanor sobbed through her fingers. “I thought maybe one day she would come home. Or at least call. Send a letter. Something. But she’s gone. She’s really gone.”
I stared at my hands, rough and calloused from work. I thought about Anna. About the way she used to hum off-key while she cooked dinner. The way she always made sure Lucas’s favorite stuffed bear was tucked in beside him at night. The way she smiled when I came home from work, even though we were always struggling to pay the rent.
She had given up a fortune for that life. For me. And I had never known.
“I need to go,” I said, standing up abruptly. The room felt too small. “I need to pick up my son from school.”
Eleanor looked up. Her face was blotchy and red. “Wait,” she said. “Please, I need—” She stopped and took a steadying breath. “Can we talk again? I need to understand. I need to know what her life was like. What kind of person she became.”
I hesitated. Every instinct in my body told me to run. To get Lucas, lock the door of our apartment, and pretend this afternoon had never happened. But then I looked at Eleanor’s face and saw my own raw grief reflected back at me.
“I’ll think about it,” I said.
I walked out of the Hart mansion and climbed into my battered delivery van. My hands shook so badly I dropped the keys twice before I could start the engine. I drove in silence toward Lucas’s school. My mind was a roar of white noise.
Anna. Evelyn. My wife. A stranger. I didn’t know who I had been married to anymore.
I didn’t sleep that night. I sat on the edge of my bed with our wedding album open in my lap. The photos showed Anna in a simple white dress she’d bought off a rack. There was no family on her side of the aisle. Just a few friends she had made at the diner where she worked. I had thought it was sad at the time, her lack of people. Now I understood it was a deliberate, calculated choice.
I traced my finger over her face in one of the photos. The smile was the same as in the portrait. The birthmark on her cheek. The way her eyes tilted slightly upward at the outer corners. I looked for differences, desperate to find one, but found none.
My phone buzzed on the nightstand. A text from my supervisor asking if I could take extra shifts this weekend. I stared at the message without reading it, my mind somewhere else entirely.
Lucas appeared in the doorway in his pajamas, his hair sticking up on one side in a cowlick that matched mine.
“Daddy? Why are you awake?”
I closed the album quickly and set it aside. “Just thinking, buddy. Come here.”
Lucas climbed onto the bed and curled into my side. He smelled like the lavender soap Anna used to buy. I had kept buying it after she died because the scent made the apartment feel less empty.
“Are you sad about Mommy again?” Lucas asked quietly.
I wrapped my arm around his small shoulders. “Yeah,” I admitted. “A little bit.”
“Me too,” Lucas said. “I wish I could remember her better.”
My chest tightened painfully. Lucas had only been three when Anna died. His memories of her were already starting to fade, turning into ghosts. Soon, all he would have were the stories I told him and the photos scattered around the apartment.
“She loved you very much,” I said, kissing the top of his head. “More than anything in the world.”
“I know,” Lucas said. He yawned, fighting sleep. “Can I sleep here tonight?”
“Sure.”
Lucas was asleep within minutes. I stayed awake until dawn, staring at the ceiling and thinking about the woman I had married. The woman who had apparently erased her entire existence just to be with me.
The next morning, after dropping Lucas at school, I sat in my van and pulled out my phone. I stared at Eleanor’s business card. She had pressed it into my hand right before I left the mansion. Her personal number was written on the back in neat, slanted handwriting.
I didn’t want to believe Eleanor. I wanted to think it was all some bizarre mistake or a cruel coincidence. But the portrait didn’t lie. And neither did the timeline. Anna had appeared in my life ten years ago with no past. She had been twenty-two then. If she was really Evelyn Hart, she would have been running for four years by that point.
I dialed the number before I could talk myself out of it. Eleanor answered on the second ring.
“This is Eleanor.”
“It’s Ethan Cole,” I said. My voice was rough from lack of sleep. “From yesterday.”
There was a brief silence on the other end. Then Eleanor spoke, her voice careful. “Thank you for calling. I wasn’t sure if you would.”
“I need to know if you’re telling the truth,” I said bluntly. “Not because I think Anna lied to me maliciously. I know she had her reasons. But I need to be sure before I… before I let myself believe that she gave up everything for me.”
“I understand,” Eleanor said quietly. “What do you need?”
“A DNA test,” I said. “Between you and my son. If Anna was really your sister, then Lucas would be your nephew. The test would show it.”
Eleanor didn’t hesitate. “Yes, of course. Whatever you need. I can arrange for a lab technician to come to you. Somewhere private. You won’t have to bring Lucas to the mansion if you don’t want to.”
“Okay,” I said, feeling something loosen slightly in my chest. “Okay.”
“Ethan,” Eleanor said, her voice gentler now. “I know this is difficult. I’m not trying to take anything from you. I just want to understand what happened to my sister. And if Lucas is my nephew…” She stopped. “I would like to know him, if you’re willing.”
I closed my eyes, leaning my head back against the headrest. “Let’s start with the test,” I said.
The lab technician came to my apartment three days later. She was professional, efficient, and quick. She swabbed Lucas’s cheek while he sat at the kitchen table eating his morning cereal. He thought it was a fun game. When she left, she told me the results would take five to seven business days.
