Jessie did not remember Sophie’s face.
That was the first thing that terrified her.
She remembered the weight of the little girl’s arms around her waist. She remembered laughter, the warmth of a small body pressed against her, and a voice calling her Aunt Jessie with the absolute confidence children reserved for people they believed would always be there. But when Jessie tried to see Sophie’s face, the memory blurred at the edges. Brown hair, maybe. A missing front tooth. A yellow sweater. None of it stayed still long enough to trust.
Gabriel watched her from across the room. “Jessie?”
She looked at him. “I don’t know who she is.”
“You remembered her.”
“I remembered being loved by her. That’s not the same thing.”
Anna still held the phone with Daniel’s ledger displayed on the screen. Rebecca and Michael remained on the call, but no one had spoken for several seconds. Even Evan had gone quiet on the second phone.
Jessie hated this. Five people knew pieces of her life while she stood in the middle trying to reconstruct herself from their expressions.
“Michael,” she said, “turn the page.”
“No.”
Jessie’s jaw tightened. “We just did this.”
“And you didn’t handle the last page particularly well.”
“I remembered a child hugging me. I didn’t set anything on fire.”
Gabriel muttered, “That’s a surprisingly low standard.”
Jessie glanced at him. “I’m trying to remain achievable.”
Under other circumstances he might have laughed. Instead, his eyes remained worried.
Michael spoke through the phone. “There are things in this ledger Daniel never intended you to read all at once.”
“Daniel is dead.”
The words came more harshly than Jessie intended.
She continued more quietly. “And everyone who has spent twenty-four years deciding what I should know has made this worse. Vale decided. Gabriel decided. Anna decided. Evan decided. Apparently Daniel decided too. I’m finished being protected by ignorance.”
Anna flinched.
Jessie noticed.
She didn’t apologize.
Not yet.
Rebecca’s voice came through the phone. “She’s right.”
Gabriel looked toward it. “Rebecca—”
“Dad, she’s right.”
Michael sighed.
A photograph arrived seconds later.
The next page of Daniel’s ledger contained no financial records. There was only writing, most of it in Daniel’s hand. Jessie enlarged the image and began reading.
Sophie Wilson is not Jessie’s daughter. If Jessie ever forgets that, you need to remind her. She will try to carry responsibility that was never hers.
Jessie’s stomach tightened.
She read further.
Sophie belongs to Rachel Wilson. Rachel is Jessie’s older sister.
Jessie stopped.
She had no sister. At least, she had spent twenty-four years believing she had no sister.
“No,” she said.
Gabriel looked at her. “What?”
“I don’t have a sister.”
Nobody answered. Jessie looked at Anna.
“Did I?”
Anna’s expression answered before she spoke.
“Yes.”
The word was devastatingly simple.
Jessie stared at her. “You knew.”
“Not at first.”
“But eventually.”
“Yes.”
Jessie laughed once, without humour. “There’s that word again.”
“Jessie—”
“What was her name?”
“Rachel.”
“How much older?”
“Five years.”
“Where is she?”
Anna looked down.
Jessie’s pulse changed.
“Where is Rachel?”
“I don’t know.”
Jessie stared.
“You’re going to need a better answer.”
“I genuinely don’t know.”
Gabriel stepped closer. “I didn’t know about Rachel.”
Jessie looked at him.
For once she believed that immediately.
“How could you not?”
“You never mentioned her.”
“Apparently I never mentioned half my life.”
Evan spoke through the other phone.
“I knew.”
Jessie closed her eyes.
Of course he did.
“How?”
“You talked about her.”
“When?”
“Before the fire.”
“What did I say?”
“That you hated her.”
The answer hit harder than Jessie expected.
“Why?”
“You said she left you.”
Jessie waited for a memory.
Nothing came.
Evan continued. “Your mother died when you were fourteen. Rachel was nineteen. She tried to take care of you for a while, but she couldn’t. She was barely surviving herself.”
Jessie felt something stir.
A kitchen with cheap linoleum. A woman crying. Jessie shouting. A suitcase near a door.
“You blamed her.”
“Yes.”
“For leaving?”
“Yes.”
“Where did she go?”
“She married someone. I don’t know his name.”
Jessie looked at the ledger again.
“Then why was Sophie a Wilson?”
“Rachel never changed her surname,” Evan said.
Jessie rubbed her forehead.
“How old was Sophie?”
“Six.”
Jessie looked at the memory again.
Small arms.
A missing tooth.
Maybe.
“Six when?”
“The year of the fire.”
Jessie calculated automatically. Sophie would be thirty now.
Not a child, but a woman. Somewhere out there, maybe.
“What happened to Rachel?” Evan was silent.
“Evan.”
“I don’t know.”
“Did Vale know about her?”
“Yes.”
That frightened Jessie more than anything else. “How?”
“He knew everything about us.”
“No. He knew what he could use.”
Silence followed.
Jessie stared at Sophie’s name.
A niece she had forgotten.
A sister she had forgotten.
Vale hadn’t merely erased Daniel.
Whatever happened after St. Catherine’s had taken an entire branch of Jessie’s life with it.
“Michael,” Jessie said, “what does the rest of the page say?”
Another image arrived.
Daniel’s handwriting continued.
Rachel came to me because Jessie would not answer her calls. She believes someone has been following Sophie. Jessie believes Rachel is exaggerating. I don’t.
Jessie’s mouth went dry.
She kept reading.
Vale knows Sophie exists. I don’t know why he cares. Jessie says he wouldn’t use a six-year-old because children are unpredictable. Jessie is wrong. Vale doesn’t care about predictability. He cares about attachment.
Jessie stopped.
The room became unbearably quiet.
Gabriel whispered, “Jesus.”
Jessie forced herself to continue.
I told Rachel to take Sophie and leave. I gave her money from Second Life and arranged somewhere temporary. Jessie does not know where. She cannot know. If Vale asks her, she needs to be able to tell the truth.
Jessie looked up.
Daniel had hidden Rachel and Sophie from her.
Not because he didn’t trust Jessie.
Because he knew Vale could read her.
Jessie suddenly remembered Daniel asking her questions in the diner.
Where’s Rachel?
Jessie rolling her eyes.
How the hell should I know?
When did you last see Sophie?
Why are you asking about Sophie?
Just answer me.
Two weeks ago.
Did Rachel say where she was going?
No.
Daniel had relaxed.
Jessie hadn’t understood why, but now she did. He had been checking whether she genuinely didn’t know.
“He used me as a firewall,” Jessie said.
Anna frowned.
“What?”
“Daniel deliberately kept me ignorant because Vale couldn’t extract information I didn’t have.”
Michael spoke. “Yes.”
Jessie stared at the phone.
“You sound very certain.”
“Because Daniel did the same thing with me.”
That surprised her. “What did he hide from you?”
“Most of Second Life.”
Jessie frowned. “You were his brother.”
“Exactly.” Michael’s voice carried no anger now. Only exhaustion.
“He knew Vale had spent years teaching me that secrets were betrayal. Daniel learned that if he wanted to protect something from Vale, he sometimes had to protect it from me too.”
Jessie thought about Michael stabbing Daniel. A boy shaped into a man who interpreted secrecy as abandonment. Vale had not needed to order Michael to hate his brother. He had only needed to teach him what betrayal looked like.
“Did Rachel get away?” Jessie asked.
Michael did not answer. Jessie felt the answer before anyone spoke.
Rebecca finally said, “For a while.”
Jessie closed her eyes. “How long?”
“Four months.”
“What happened?”
“We’re still piecing it together.”
“No. Tell me what you know.”
Rebecca’s voice remained calm. “Rachel and Sophie were living under different names. Daniel arranged housing through Second Life. After Daniel died, someone accessed the foundation records.”
Jessie felt sick.
“Me.”
“We don’t know.”
“Stop saying that like you’re protecting me.”
“I’m not. I’m saying it because the records don’t identify the person.”
Jessie appreciated that.
Evidence first.
“Someone accessed Rachel’s location.”
“Yes.”
“Then?”
“They disappeared.”
“Both?”
“Yes.”
“Bodies?”
“No.”
“Death certificates?”
“No.”
“Police reports?”
“Not under their real names.”
Jessie looked at Anna.
“Did you know this?”
“No.”
Evan spoke.
“I knew Rachel disappeared.”
Jessie turned toward his phone.
“And Sophie?”
“I assumed she was with her.”
“Did you look?”
“Yes.”
“For how long?”
“Years.”
Jessie’s anger faltered.
“You looked for my family?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
Evan was quiet. “Because you couldn’t.”
The answer hurt.
Jessie sat down.
For all the terrible things between them, Evan had apparently spent years looking for two people Jessie no longer remembered existed.
“Did you find anything?”
“One thing.”
Jessie waited.
“Seven years after the fire, I found a school photograph.”
Her heart began beating harder.
“Sophie?”
“I thought so.”
“Where?”
“Nova Scotia.”
“Did you go?”
“Yes.”
“And?”
“The family had moved.”
“Name?”
“False.”
“Where did they go?”
“I never found out.”
Jessie closed her eyes.
Sophie might have survived.
Rachel too.
A six-year-old girl could have grown up believing her aunt abandoned her. Except Jessie hadn’t merely abandoned her. Jessie had forgotten she existed.
“Send me the photograph.”
Evan hesitated.
“Now.”
The image arrived.
It was grainy, scanned from what appeared to be an old yearbook. A girl around thirteen stood in the second row of a class photograph. Dark hair. Serious eyes. A slightly crooked smile.
Jessie’s chest tightened because she knew that smile. Not from herself but from the woman in the kitchen.
It was Rachel.
The memory came hard.
Rachel leaning against a counter, laughing because Jessie had tried to cut her own hair.
“Oh my God, Jess, what did you do?”
“It’s fine.”
“You look like you lost a fight with a lawn mower.”
“Shut up.”
Sophie, tiny and delighted, shouting from the table, “Lawn mower!”
Rachel laughing harder.
Jessie opened her eyes with tears running down her face. Nobody commented.
Good.
She wiped them away.
“That was her.”
Evan’s voice softened. “I thought so.”
“She’s alive in that photograph.”
“She was then.”
Jessie looked at the date.
Seventeen years ago.
A lifetime and yesterday.
“What name was she using?”
Evan answered.
“Sophie Hart.”
Jessie repeated it. The name meant nothing.
Rebecca suddenly spoke.
“Wait.”
Jessie looked toward the phone.
“What?”
“Say that again.”
“Sophie Hart.”
Silence.
Then Rebecca swore.
Gabriel stared at the phone. “Rebecca?”
“I know that name.”
Jessie stood.
“How?”
“She applied for a research position with me.”
The room froze.
“When?”
“Three years ago.”
Jessie’s pulse exploded.
“Did you meet her?”
“No. She withdrew before the interview.”
“Resume?”
“I might still have it.”
“Don’t send it yet.”
Everyone looked at Jessie.
She surprised herself too.
“Why not?” Gabriel asked.
“Because if Sophie is alive and has spent twenty-four years hidden, I am not putting her personal information onto six phones and whatever else is listening to us.”
Rebecca was silent for a second.
“That’s exactly what she wrote in her withdrawal email.”
Jessie felt cold.
“What?”
“She said she had reconsidered because she was uncomfortable having personal information stored in institutional systems.”
Gabriel frowned. “That’s not unusual.”
“No,” Rebecca said, “but the wording was strange enough that I remembered it.”
“Do you remember anything else?” Jessie asked.
“She had a graduate degree. Social work, I think. Trauma counselling.”
Jessie almost laughed.
Another person from Vale’s orbit who had chosen to help people instead of control them.
Vale would have hated Sophie too.
“Where was she living?”
“I don’t remember.”
“Don’t check while we’re on the phone.”
Rebecca understood immediately.
“You think someone is monitoring searches.”
“I think we have spent several days announcing our discoveries seconds after making them. I’d like to stop being helpful.”
Michael spoke for the first time in several minutes.
“Good.”
Jessie frowned. “Don’t sound proud of me. We don’t know each other well enough.”
To her surprise, Michael laughed. It sounded nothing like Daniel and that relieved her.
Jessie looked back at the ledger.
“There’s more.”
Michael’s humour disappeared.
“Yes.”
“Show me.”
“I think we should find Sophie first.”
Jessie stared at the phone.
“That sentence guarantees I want the page.”
“Jessie.”
“Michael.”
Rebecca interrupted. “Send it.”
“Rebecca—”
“Send it.”
There was a pause.
Then the image arrived.
The next page wasn’t Daniel’s handwriting.
It was Jessie’s.
Nineteen-year-old Jessie’s handwriting was sharper, messier and pressed so hard into the paper that some letters had nearly torn through.
At the top:
IF RACHEL FINDS THIS, I’M SORRY.
Jessie’s throat closed.
She read.
Daniel is dead. Evan is alive. Michael is gone. Vale knows about Sophie. I don’t know who told him. It might have been me.
Jessie stopped.
Gabriel moved closer but didn’t touch her.
She continued.
I moved the Second Life money because Daniel told me where it was. I sent Rachel’s share through the foundation because I thought it was safe. I was wrong. Someone followed the transfer.
Jessie’s vision blurred.
There it was. The third mistake. Daniel made the first, Vale made the second and Jessie made the third.
Not intentionally but consequences didn’t care about intention.
She continued reading.
Rachel called me. She said someone had found them. She blamed me. She was right. I told her to take Sophie and run. She asked me to come with them.
Jessie’s hands shook.
The next sentence was shorter.
I said no.
Gabriel whispered her name.
Jessie continued.
I told Rachel I had to finish this. I told her if I came with them I’d only bring danger. She said danger was already there. She said Sophie needed me.
Jessie couldn’t breathe properly.
The memory came.
A payphone. Rain. Rachel crying. Jessie holding the receiver so tightly her fingers hurt.
“Please, Jess.”
“I can’t.”
“She keeps asking for you.”
“Don’t tell her where I am.”
“She thinks you left her.”
“Let her.”
Rachel had gone silent.
Then: “I hate you.”
Jessie had closed her eyes. “I know.”
The memory vanished.
Jessie bent forward.
Anna moved toward her.
Jessie raised a hand.
Not yet.
She needed the rest.
I thought staying away would protect them. I thought if Sophie hated me, she’d stop asking for me and Rachel could disappear properly. I thought being hated was better than getting them killed.
Jessie swallowed.
I was wrong about that too.
The final paragraph was written smaller.
Vale offered me a deal. He said he would stop looking for Rachel and Sophie if I completed the memory work. He wanted to know whether he could remove Daniel and leave the rest of me intact. I told him yes. I made him swear Sophie would never be touched.
Jessie stared.
Vale had lied.
Of course he had.
But nineteen-year-old Jessie had believed she could bargain with a man who treated human beings as experiments.
The last line destroyed whatever remained of her composure.
If I forget Sophie, maybe Vale will believe she doesn’t matter.
Jessie lowered the phone.
Now she understood.
She had not forgotten Sophie because the child was unimportant.
She had forgotten her because Sophie mattered too much.
Vale studied attachment.
Jessie had tried to erase the attachment he could use against her.
She had made herself forget a child she loved in the desperate hope that Vale would stop seeing Sophie as leverage.
And for twenty-four years, it may have worked.
Gabriel sat beside her.
Jessie didn’t move away.
“I abandoned her.”
“No.”
Jessie looked at him.
“I told Rachel no.”
“You were nineteen.”
“I knew what I was doing.”
“You were nineteen, traumatized, hunted and being manipulated by a man who had spent years learning exactly how to use your fear.”
“That explains it.”
“Yes.”
“It doesn’t erase it.”
“No.”
Jessie appreciated that answer more than comfort.
Anna sat opposite her.
“You were trying to protect them.”
“And I got their location exposed.”
“You don’t know that.”
“I sent the money.”
“You didn’t know the foundation was compromised.”
Jessie looked at her.
“The accountant I helped frame didn’t know someone would alter those documents. The security guard didn’t know I’d bypassed his system. The housekeeper didn’t know I’d stolen the jewellery she’d be accused of taking.”
Anna understood.
“Intent doesn’t undo consequences.”
“No.”
“But responsibility isn’t the same as total responsibility.”
Jessie stared at her.
Anna continued. “That’s the mistake Vale taught all of us. He wanted us to believe everything was absolute. Loyal or disloyal. Strong or weak. Useful or disposable. Guilty or innocent. Human beings aren’t that clean.”
Jessie looked at Daniel’s ledger.
“I sent the money. Someone followed it. That’s mine.”
“Yes.”
“Vale exploited it. That’s his.”
“Yes.”
“Rachel asked me to come. I refused. That’s mine too.”
“Yes.”
Jessie breathed.
For once nobody tried to take her guilt away.
They simply refused to let it become larger than the truth.
Rebecca broke the silence.
“Jessie.”
“Yes?”
“I found Sophie’s application.”
Jessie’s heart jumped.
“Don’t say the address.”
“I won’t.”
“Is there a phone number?”
“Yes.”
“Current?”
“I don’t know.”
“Don’t call it.”
Gabriel frowned. “Why not?”
“Because if Sophie has stayed hidden this long, a call from Rebecca immediately after Rebecca disappears may scare her or expose her.”
“So what do we do?”
Jessie thought.
The old Jessie would have traced the number, found the address and appeared at the door before sunrise.
That felt wrong.
Sophie was not a clue.
She was a person.
A person who might have spent most of her life trying to stay away from this.
“We give her a choice.”
“How?”
Rebecca said quietly, “I still have the email address.”
Jessie considered it.
“Send one message.”
“What should it say?”
Jessie stared at the photograph of Sophie at thirteen.
She thought about a six-year-old asking why Aunt Jessie wouldn’t come.
She thought about a woman now thirty who might not want anything to do with the aunt who disappeared.
“Tell her Rebecca Shaw needs to speak with her about Rachel Wilson.”
Gabriel looked at Jessie.
“Don’t mention me?”
“No.”
“Why?”
“Because my name might frighten her.”
Or anger her.
Jessie could live with either.
“And if she doesn’t answer?” Anna asked.
“Then we respect it.”
Evan spoke. “You won’t.”
Jessie looked toward his phone.
“What?”
“You won’t be able to leave it alone.”
Old Jessie wouldn’t have.
Maybe current Jessie wouldn’t either.
But there was a difference between wanting an answer and believing she was entitled to one.
“I’ll try.”
Evan was silent.
That seemed to satisfy him more than a promise would have.
Rebecca sent the email.
Then they waited.
Ten minutes.
Twenty.
Thirty.
Jessie discovered that waiting for a stranger who might be her forgotten niece to answer an email was significantly more stressful than breaking into buildings had ever been.
“This is ridiculous,” she muttered.
Gabriel looked at her. “What?”
“I’ve stolen diamonds with a lower heart rate.”
Anna stared.
Jessie shrugged. “They don’t answer emails.”
At forty-three minutes, Rebecca’s phone chimed.
Everyone stopped.
“It’s her.”
Jessie stood.
“What did she say?”
Rebecca read silently first.
Her voice changed.
“Jessie…”
“What?”
“She wrote back.”
“I gathered that.”
“There’s only one sentence.”
Jessie’s heart pounded.
“Read it.”
Rebecca hesitated.
Then she did.
If Jessie Wilson is with you, tell her I remember everything she made herself forget.
Jessie stared at the wall.
Nobody spoke.
A second email arrived.
Rebecca inhaled.
“What?”
“This one has an attachment.”
“Open it.”
The attachment was a photograph.
Rebecca forwarded it.
Jessie opened it.
Two women stood together beside a lake.
The photograph was recent.
One was around thirty.
Dark hair.
Serious eyes.
Rachel’s crooked smile.
Sophie. The woman beside her was older – in her late forties, perhaps early fifties.Jessie recognized her before her conscious mind understood why.
Rachel.
Alive.
Jessie’s knees nearly gave out.
Her sister was alive.
Sophie was alive.
For twenty-four years, Jessie had carried the guilt of believing her mistake might have destroyed them.
They had survived.
Gabriel grabbed the back of a chair.
Anna began crying.
Jessie simply stared.
There was writing across the bottom of the photograph.
We survived without you.
It hurt.
It was supposed to.
Jessie didn’t resent it.
Then Rebecca received another email.
“There’s more.”
Jessie couldn’t look away from Rachel’s face.
“What?”
Rebecca read it aloud.
But we didn’t survive because Vale kept his promise.
Jessie finally looked up.
A third message arrived.
We survived because someone else found us first.
Jessie’s stomach tightened.
“Who?”
Rebecca opened the final attachment.
It was an old photograph.
Rachel.
Sophie at six.
And a man standing beside them.
Jessie recognized him instantly.
Her mind rejected it.
Gabriel stood.
Anna whispered, “That’s impossible.”
Jessie stared at the man’s face.
She had watched him die.
She had pulled the trigger.
She remembered the sound.
The blood.
The fire.
Daniel Mercer stood beside Rachel and Sophie in a photograph dated six months after the night he supposedly died.
Jessie’s entire body went cold.
“No.”
Michael spoke quietly through the phone.
“I told you the ledger would change everything.”
Jessie barely heard him.
She enlarged the photograph.
Daniel was thinner. A scar crossed the side of his face. He leaned on a cane.
But it was Daniel.
Alive.
Six months after St. Catherine’s.
Jessie remembered the gun in her hand.
Daniel against the wall.
Don’t let them take me.
She remembered firing.
She remembered believing for twenty-four years that she had killed the man she loved.
Yet there he was.
Standing beside the sister and niece she had erased from her own memory.
Jessie looked at Anna.
“You said he died.”
“I thought he did.”
She looked at Gabriel.
“You saw him after I shot him.”
“Yes.”
“Was he dead?”
Gabriel’s face went pale.
“I never checked.”
Jessie closed her eyes.
Of course.
Fire.
Smoke.
Panic.
Everyone running.
A body assumed dead. A building burning. A newspaper reporting a victim. Vale controlling the narrative. Daniel had survived. At least for six months.
Jessie’s phone chimed. This time Sophie had sent a message directly to the number Rebecca had given her.
Jessie opened it.
Daniel told us never to contact you. He said forgetting us was the only chance you had to survive Vale.
Another message followed.
He made us promise.
Jessie’s eyes filled. Then came the third.
I’m sorry, Aunt Jessie.
Jessie pressed a hand over her mouth.
One final message appeared.
Daniel didn’t die at St. Catherine’s.
Jessie stared at it.
Then another.
But he is dead.
Her relief collapsed.
Jessie forced herself to type.
When?
Sophie’s answer came almost immediately.
Twenty-three years ago.
Jessie stared. Six months after the fire.
How?
This time Sophie took longer. When the answer arrived, Jessie understood why.
Someone found us. Daniel got us out. He stayed behind.
Jessie’s hands trembled.
Who found you?
The typing indicator appeared and then it stopped. Appeared again, then the answer arrived.
You did.
Jessie stopped breathing.
Gabriel read over her shoulder. “What?”
Another message followed.
You found us, Jessie. You found Daniel. You found my mother. You found me.
Jessie stared. That was impossible because she had already undergone the memory procedure by then.
Hadn’t she?
She looked at Gabriel. “When did Vale erase my memories?”
“About two weeks after the fire.”
Sophie said the photograph was six months later. Jessie had apparently found them months after she had already forgotten Daniel, Rachel and Sophie.
“How?”
Anna whispered.
Jessie knew what she meant.
How could Jessie find people she didn’t remember existed?
Another message came.
Daniel knew you might forget.
Then:
So before the fire, he taught you how to find us without remembering who we were.
Jessie’s heart pounded. A contingency inside a contingency.
Daniel had known.
Second Life.
Not merely identities.
Not merely money.
A path.
A way back.
Jessie suddenly remembered the calendar.
Six blank months.
Then December:
Start over.
Maybe the blank months hadn’t been empty.
Maybe she had filled them after forgetting.
Maybe she had been following instructions left by a version of herself she no longer knew.
Sophie sent one final message.
There’s something Daniel left for you.
Jessie typed:
Where?
Sophie’s response appeared.
You already have it.
Jessie frowned.
She looked around Anna’s apartment.
The photographs.
The ledger.
Her phone.
Nothing.
Then she remembered the locked case in her own apartment.
The case she’d opened when Emily disappeared.
Old IDs, cash, equipment, photographs, a passport under a false identity and one item she had never examined because she had assumed she knew what it was.
A small brass key.
Jessie had carried it from apartment to apartment for twenty-four years but she had never known what it opened.
Her phone chimed again. Sophie’s message contained only five words.
Daniel was waiting for you.
Jessie stared at the screen. Then she understood the real question. Not whether Daniel had survived St. Catherine’s because he had. Not whether Jessie had found him afterward, apparently she had.
The question was what happened when she did because if Jessie had found Daniel six months after forgetting him, then sometime during the missing year she had stood face-to-face with the man she loved – and had not known who he was.
Please come back tomorrow for the next chapter…
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