Chapter 14 - The Attic Box
The next morning, while the boys were at school and Clara was playing quietly with her building blocks in the living room, James and I hauled down a heavy, dust-covered wooden chest from the very back corner of the attic.
It was our parents' old keepsake trunk—a box I hadn't opened since my mother’s funeral.
We dragged it out into the hallway sunlight. Inside were old tax forms, rusted jewelry, yellowed newspaper clippings, and stacks of faded photographs bound together with dry rubber bands.
"Let's check the vital documents first," James suggested, lifting a heavy leather folder.
Inside were birth certificates. Mine, dated thirty-four years ago. Maya’s, dated twenty-six years ago.
And then, stuck to the back of Maya’s folder, was a folded hospital document that made my breath catch. It wasn't a birth certificate. It was a relinquishment and adoption decree dated four years before I was born.
My hands trembled as I unfolded the crisp, yellowed paper.
“Child: Elena Rose Miller. Born to Robert and Margaret Miller [our parents]. Placed for closed adoption on October 14, 1991, due to severe financial hardship.”
I dropped the paper as if it had burned my skin.
"An older sister," I whispered, the words tasting like metal in my mouth. "My parents had a child before me. They gave her up for adoption when they were struggling, long before they had me."
James picked up the document, his eyes narrowing as he read the fine print at the bottom. "That explains why you never knew about her. But look at who signed as the legal guardian overseeing the closed adoption records twenty-eight years ago... your mother’s sister, your Aunt Beatrice."
"Aunt Beatrice?" I gasped. "Beatrice died ten years ago in Florida. She was a recluse."
"Maybe so," James said, standing up and pulling out his phone. "But if Elena was adopted out as an infant, how did she find out about Maya, about you, and most importantly... about Clara?"
Before I could answer, my phone rang on the kitchen counter. It wasn't an ordinary call; it was an unknown, restricted number.
I picked it up slowly, hitting speakerphone so James could hear.
"Hello?" I answered, my voice taut with tension.
A cold, raspy feminine voice echoed from the other end of the line, dripping with bitter venom:
May you like
"Did you like my picture, little sister? You've been living a very comfortable life in my parents' old house, raising a child that doesn't belong to you. But secrets don't stay buried forever in this family. Meet me at the old Miller family lake house by sundown today, alone. If you bring your husband, or the police... the next picture I send you won't be of your childhood. It will be of Clara."
Click.
