CHAPTER 6 – The Stranger at the Front Gate
The first child arrived at Grace House on a cold October morning.
She was only nine years old.
Thin.
Silent.
Clutching a faded teddy bear with one missing eye.
Her name was Lily Morgan.
She hadn't spoken a single word since her parents died in a highway accident six months earlier.
Emily knelt beside her.
"You don't have to talk."
"We'll wait."
Days passed.
Lily refused to eat with the other children.
She slept with the lights on.
Every night she sat alone by the attic window, staring into the darkness as if waiting for someone.
Then, exactly one week after she arrived...
A black luxury sedan stopped outside Grace House.
A sharply dressed attorney stepped out.
"I represent the Morgan Estate."
He handed Emily a sealed envelope.
"The child must leave immediately."
"She belongs with her legal guardian."
Emily frowned.
"There must be some mistake."
The lawyer shook his head.
"There isn't."
The legal guardian's name made everyone's blood run cold.
Robert Carter Jr.
Emily's uncle.
The only son of the late Robert Carter.
The man who had disappeared from the family decades earlier.
No one had heard from him in over twenty years.
Thomas whispered,
"I thought he was dead..."
The lawyer smiled coldly.
"He isn't."
"And he's coming tomorrow."
That night, Grace couldn't sleep.
Something felt terribly wrong.
She searched through Eleanor's old files one last time.
Hidden inside an old Bible was a newspaper clipping dated twenty-seven years earlier.
LOCAL BOY DISAPPEARS AFTER TESTIFYING AGAINST HIS FATHER.
The boy in the photo...
looked exactly like Robert Carter Jr.
Except the article claimed he had changed his name after entering witness protection.
Grace stared at the article.
If Robert Jr. had been hiding all these years...
Why come back now?
Then Lily quietly walked into the room for the first time.
She placed her teddy bear on the table.
May you like
Emily noticed something stitched inside the torn fabric.
A tiny flash drive.
