The Sister in the Clinic File
Chapter 08 - The Sister in the Clinic File
Clara learned about her sister from a court document, which seemed fitting for a Hastings family secret.
Richard had never allowed truth to arrive with warmth if a notarized copy would do.
Ava Lillian Hastings.
Born four months after Clara’s seventh birthday.
Mother listed as Lillian Hastings.
Father left blank.
Clara read the line three times.
It did not change.
“That’s impossible,” she said.
Margaret Ellis watched her carefully. “Not impossible. Hidden.”
“My mother died when I was six.”
“That is what Richard told everyone.”
Damen’s chair scraped back.
Elena covered her mouth.
Clara heard a high, thin ringing in her ears. The kitchen blurred at the edges, not because she was weak, not because her father had been right, but because reality had just opened a locked room under her feet.
“She died,” Clara repeated.
Margaret’s voice gentled without losing its steadiness. “Lillian disappeared from public life when you were six. The death certificate filed that year was irregular. Your father controlled the physician, the funeral home, the estate notices. I suspected, but suspicion is not proof.”
Clara’s fingers pressed into the table.
“Where is Ava?”
“That is what I hoped you might help me discover.”
A sound came from Elena.
Not quite a sob.
Clara turned on her. “You knew?”
“No.” Elena shook her head quickly. “No, Clara. I swear to you. Lillian told me she feared she was pregnant before she disappeared, but then Richard produced the death notice, and Antonio died soon after, and I—”
“You what?”
Elena closed her eyes.
“I believed what grief made easier to believe.”
The words were honest.
Clara hated them anyway.
Damen spoke then, low and controlled. “If Ava exists, Richard kept her hidden because she threatens the trust.”
Margaret nodded. “Or because Lillian managed to protect one daughter in a way she could not protect the other.”
Clara stood.
“I need air.”
Damen moved toward her, then stopped himself.
“Clara.”
“No.”
She walked out before anyone could follow.
The hallway stretched long and dim, lined with portraits of Rossi men who all looked as if they had died before apologizing. Clara passed them without looking up.
She found a side door and stepped into the cold afternoon.
The garden behind the mansion was bare for winter, all stone paths and sleeping hedges. Her breath turned white. Her wedding ring flashed on her hand, absurdly bright.
A sister.
A mother who might not have died when Clara was told she died.
Ten years of grief rearranged into something worse.
Not loss.
Theft.
Clara walked until the mansion disappeared behind tall cypress trees. Then she bent over with both hands on her knees and let one sound leave her. Just one. Raw and quiet, swallowed by the cold.
When she straightened, Damen stood twenty feet away.
He had followed her.
But he had stopped far enough back.
For reasons she did not want to examine, that almost made her cry again.
“I told you no,” she said.
“I know.”
“Then why are you here?”
“Because you walked toward the west gate, and Richard has men watching the property.”
Clara looked at him.
He pointed with his chin.
Through the bare hedge, she saw a black sedan parked near the service road.
Her breath caught.
Damen did not say I told you so. Smart man.
“They won’t come onto Rossi property,” he said. “But they’ll wait for you to leave it alone.”
Clara wrapped her arms around herself.
“Everyone keeps watching me.”
“Yes.”
“I hate it.”
“I know.”
“No,” she snapped. “You don’t know. You’ve been watched because people fear you. I’ve been watched because people think I’m breakable.”
Damen absorbed that like a hit he deserved.
“You’re right.”
Again.
That infuriating, disarming honesty.
Clara looked away.
The black sedan’s window reflected a slice of sky.
“I may have a sister,” she said.
“You do.”
She turned back sharply.
He held up his phone.
“Margaret found a sealed address linked to Ava’s clinic file. Vincent is checking it.”
Hope rose so fast it hurt.
Then suspicion caught it by the throat.
“Why would Richard keep her alive?”
Damen’s eyes darkened.
“Leverage.”
The word hung between them.
Clara thought of her mother hiding a bank key in a locket, sewing a warning into a veil, scattering proof like breadcrumbs for a daughter she might never see grown.
Maybe Lillian had fought until the very end.
Maybe Clara had been mourning the wrong version of her.
Damen’s phone buzzed.
He answered, listened, and his expression changed.
“What?” Clara asked.
He lowered the phone slowly.
“Vincent found the address.”
“And?”
“It’s not a house.”
Clara’s stomach tightened.
Damen looked toward the black sedan beyond the hedge.
“It’s a convent school in Wisconsin. And according to their records, Ava Hastings was removed from campus this morning by Richard’s attorney.”
Clara’s grief turned cold.
Her father knew.
The thought of Ava rearranged Clara’s childhood with merciless hands. Every locked room in Hastings House changed shape. Every whispered argument after bedtime became a possible map. The years she had felt alone were no longer empty; somewhere beyond her reach, another girl had been living under a different version of the same shadow.
Clara wondered if Ava liked peaches too. If she had Lillian’s laugh. If Richard had ever looked at her with the same polished disappointment, or if he had saved that expression for the daughter useful enough to display.
Damen did not interrupt her thoughts. He stood with the patience of a man forcing himself to unlearn command.
That mattered more than any grand vow could have.
May you like
Clara had been surrounded all her life by men who filled silence because they feared what a woman might discover inside it. Damen, whatever else he had been, let the silence remain hers.
Somehow, he knew they had opened the locket.
