Chapter 25 - The Ghost in the Glass
We retreated to the kitchen of the old Vance Bakery. The scent of cinnamon and yeast, which usually brought comfort, felt hollow against the creeping dread. Rain lashed at the storefront windows, reflecting the neon streetlights of the town that Richard Sterling was trying to choke to death.
Lily was asleep upstairs in the small loft bedroom, worn out from the stress of the trial. Downstairs, Carol sat at the rustic butcher-block table, her hands trembling around a mug of hot chamomile tea.
"You lied to me my whole life," I said softly, standing across from her with my arms folded. The anger in my chest was real, but beneath it lay an exhausting sorrow. "You made me feel like an outsider in my own home. You favored everyone over me, you treated Lily like she didn't exist at Christmas dinner, and all this time you were sitting on a secret that could destroy everything Dad built?"
Carol lowered her head, tears spilling down her weathered cheeks. "I didn't know she was alive, Emma. I swear on your father’s grave, I didn't know. Arthur showed me the death certificate from the Swiss prefecture. We built this bakery together with my dowry and his bare hands. If Richard Sterling has brought Evelyn back from the grave, it’s not because she wants this town. It’s because Richard bought her signature."
"Can you buy an international claim?" I asked, pacing the narrow kitchen floor.
"If you have fifty million dollars and forty years of grudge, you can buy whatever you want," a gruff voice answered from the back door.
It was Frank Callahan, our family attorney, shaking rain from his trench coat as he stepped into the bakery. Under his arm, he carried an accordion folder stuffed with thick legal dossiers.
"I just got off the phone with our correspondent in Zurich," Frank said without preamble, laying the papers out on the table under the yellow hanging lamp. "Marcus Sterling wasn't lying about the marriage. Arthur Vance and Evelyn Montgomery were legally married in 1968. But here is what Sterling didn't mention in court: Evelyn Montgomery had a child."
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Carol gasped, dropping her teacup. Porcelain shattered across the floor, splashing hot tea across the hem of her skirt. "A child? No... Arthur never had another child. He couldn't!"
"A girl," Frank said grimly. "Born in a private clinic in Lausanne in 1970. Under the original 1974 Vance Trust charter, if a direct firstborn heir exists, Lily's claim is subordinate. And that heir is arriving in town tomorrow morning on Richard Sterling’s private jet."