Chapter 9 - The Family Photograph
Emergency power returned after nineteen seconds.
The black phone was gone.
Grace remained beside the staircase with her hand still raised to her ear. Someone had taken the device in darkness without touching her.
Federal agents sealed the building.
They searched every visitor, employee, stairwell, storage room, and exit.
They found nothing.
Daniel took Grace to a private conference room while Elena examined the compartment beneath the railing.
“What did the caller say?” Daniel asked.
“Your father is not the only Bell who survived.”
Daniel sat very still.
“Who else could that mean?”
“My mother died in a hospital. I saw her body. My father died at home. I identified him.”
Daniel hesitated.
“What?”
“There is something I should have told you years ago.”
Grace laughed once, without humor.
“That sentence is becoming very popular.”
Daniel opened his briefcase and removed a worn folder.
“Your mother had a younger sister.”
Grace stared at him.
“My mother was an only child.”
“That is what she told you.”
Inside the folder was a birth certificate.
MARGARET ELAINE BELL.
Beneath it was a second certificate issued two years later.
CHARLOTTE ANNE BELL.
Grace read the names twice.
“Why have I never heard of Charlotte?”
“She disappeared at seventeen. Your grandparents removed her from every family record they could control.”
“Why?”
“Your mother never told me. Samuel believed Charlotte became involved with a group that later helped establish Continuum.”
Grace felt another piece of her childhood become uncertain.
“Was my mother involved?”
“I don’t know.”
Elena entered carrying a thin object wrapped in a handkerchief.
“I found this taped inside the projector housing.”
It was an old photograph.
Two young women stood beside a lake, nearly identical except for their hairstyles. One was Grace’s mother.
The other had to be Charlotte.
Between them stood a dark-haired man Grace recognized as a younger Samuel Bell.
On the back was written:
MARGARET CHOSE THE FAMILY.
CHARLOTTE CHOSE THE FUTURE.
ONLY ONE OF THEM DIED AT THE HOSPITAL.
Grace gripped the edge of the table.
“No.”
Daniel examined the photograph.
“This could be designed to destabilize you.”
“Everything could be designed to destabilize me.”
Elena placed a hand near Grace’s, careful not to touch until Grace nodded.
“What do we know for certain?” Elena asked.
Grace forced herself to think.
“Nathan was replaced after the accident. My father discovered it. Ashcroft imprisoned the original and maintained the replacement. My father created Winterglass to expose the organization.”
“And the rest?”
“Possibilities.”
Daniel nodded.
“The woman on the phone wants you to chase family secrets. We should ask why.”
Grace looked again at the photograph.
The two sisters resembled each other enough to exchange identities.
The thought felt impossible.
Then Grace remembered her mother’s final months.
Margaret had developed a tremor in her right hand. She occasionally called Grace by her middle name, Claire, despite rarely using it before. She became frightened whenever Samuel entered the room carrying red roses.
Doctors attributed the confusion to medication and exhaustion.
What if those explanations had also been comfortable?
Nathan entered the conference room with a hospital escort.
Grace looked at Daniel.
“You called him?”
“No,” Nathan said. “I came because someone sent this to the hospital.”
He handed Grace a sealed envelope.
Her name appeared across the front in the same block letters as the envelope beneath the pillow.
Inside was a key card and a note.
THE REPLACEMENT HAS REQUESTED TO SPEAK WITH YOU.
HE KNOWS WHICH SISTER CAME HOME.
The meeting took place the following morning inside a secure federal detention facility.
Grace sat behind a reinforced table. Daniel remained in an observation room. Two guards stood outside the door.
The replacement entered wearing gray detention clothing.
Without the black suit, polished shoes, and controlled posture, he looked less like Nathan.
He looked like an exhausted man with no identity left to perform.
Grace did not greet him.
“You asked to speak.”
He sat opposite her.
“I saw Charlotte Bell once.”
“When?”
“The night your father died.”
Grace’s body went rigid.
“She came to the house after Evelyn left. Samuel was still alive.”
“You told police he died immediately.”
“I was ordered to.”
“Did you push him?”
“No.”
“Did you touch him?”
“I tried to help him stand. He struck me with a fireplace tool.”
“Why?”
“He had discovered I was not Nathan.”
Grace watched his face carefully.
“Who caused his fall?”
“Charlotte.”
The room seemed to narrow.
“She pushed him?”
“She told him to give her the secondary archive. He refused. They struggled near the stairs. I saw him fall.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Adrian threatened to erase me. And Charlotte said you would be next.”
“Where is she now?”
“I don’t know.”
“Which sister died at the hospital?”
The replacement looked directly at her.
“Charlotte.”
Grace remembered the words on the photograph.
Only one of them died at the hospital.
“Then my mother survived?”
“She survived the night recorded on the death certificate.”
Grace struggled to keep her voice steady.
“Where did she go?”
“Samuel moved her into Ashcroft’s original witness program.”
Grace stood so quickly the chair struck the floor.
“My father let me believe she was dead?”
“He believed it was the only way to keep her away from Continuum.”
“Where is she?”
The replacement leaned closer.
“There was a name in Adrian’s private records. Marion Vale. She lives in Boston.”
Grace turned toward the door.
“One more thing,” he said.
She stopped.
“When I poured the liquid onto your pillow, I was not following Adrian’s order.”
Grace looked back.
“Then whose order were you following?”
“Marion Vale’s.”
Grace’s heart pounded.
The replacement continued.
“She told me you were in danger and that the pillow had to be removed from the condo before midnight. She said someone had placed a tracking agent inside it.”
“You expected me to sleep on it.”
“I thought you were at the clinic. I was going to remove the pillow before you returned.”
“You told the caller, ‘It’s done. She’ll never suspect me.’”
“I was not speaking about the vial.”
“What were you speaking about?”
“The envelope.”
Grace remembered him fluffing the pillow, the urgent call, and his return to the apartment.
“Why did you return?”
“To recover the envelope before Nathan’s people arrived.”
“Which Nathan?”
He shook his head.
“Not your husband. Not me.”
Grace felt cold.
“Then who?”
The replacement looked toward the mirrored observation window.
“The man who created both of us.”
Before Grace could ask another question, the fire alarm sounded.
The guards opened the door.
Smoke entered the corridor.
Daniel appeared behind the glass, shouting for Grace to leave.
The replacement grabbed her wrist.
“Marion Vale is not your mother,” he said.
Grace pulled away.
“You just said she was.”
“I said your mother survived.”
“Then who is Marion?”
His face filled with terror.
“She is the first Grace Bell.”
The lights failed.
When they returned, the replacement lay unconscious beside the table.
A folded photograph had been placed in Grace’s chair.
It showed Samuel and Margaret Bell holding a baby.
May you like
On the back was a date.
It was three years before Grace was born.
