Chapter 6 - Eleanor Left Clara a Recording
The Hartwell attorney located an old sealed packet connected to the
trust.
Inside was a cassette tape.
Eleanor’s voice had been recorded twenty-nine years earlier.
She sounded young.
Terrified.
She addressed Diane.
“If anything happens to me, take care of Clara.”
Clara covered her mouth.
Eleanor said she was leaving the Hartwell family temporarily.
She feared her father would try to control her child through money.
She asked Diane to raise Clara if she could not return safely.
Then she said something nobody expected.
“Do not tell Clara I’m dead unless you know I am.”
Margaret began crying.
Daniel stared at her.
“You told everyone Eleanor died.”
Margaret whispered:
“I believed she had.”
“Based on what?”
A car belonging to Eleanor was found abandoned after a storm.
Her coat was recovered near a river.
No body was found.
The family declared her dead years later.
Margaret had accepted the conclusion.
Diane had too.
But Eleanor’s recording made one fact clear.
She had planned to disappear before the storm.
The abandoned car might not have been an accident.
Clara looked at Margaret.
“Could she still be alive?”
Margaret answered honestly.
“I don’t know.”
For the first time that day, Vanessa’s loan and the missing chair seemed
small.
Clara might have a living mother somewhere.
And the only person who might know more was dead.
May you like
Diane.
Or so they thought.
