The Maid Wearing Her Lost Daughter's Necklace

Chapter 2: The Child They Buried

Charles closed the bedroom door behind him.

Sofia stepped back, but Eleanor moved in front of her.

"You knew she was alive," Eleanor said.

Charles looked at the maid with cold, careful eyes.

"I knew there was a possibility."

"A possibility?"

Eleanor's voice rose.

"You watched me bury an empty coffin."

Charles sighed. "You were ill. The doctors said another shock could kill you."

"So you lied for twenty years?"

"I protected you."

Eleanor laughed bitterly. "No. You protected yourself."

Sofia stared between them.

"Am I your daughter?" she asked.

The question silenced the room.

Eleanor turned toward her, tears filling her eyes.

"I don't know yet," she said. "But I intend to find out."

Charles stepped closer. "This must stay private."

Eleanor looked at him in disbelief.

"Why?"

He did not answer.

That was enough to make her suspicious.

She remembered the night the twins were born. Isabel had survived, small but healthy. The second baby had been taken away before Eleanor could hold her.

The doctor said the child stopped breathing.

Charles arranged everything.

He insisted Eleanor not see the body.

At the time, grief had made her too weak to question him.

Now she understood that every detail had been controlled.

Sofia touched the pendant.

"The nun who raised me was called Sister Maria," she said. "She told me a man brought me to the convent during a storm. He paid them to keep my name secret."

Charles's face tightened.

Eleanor saw it.

"You know Sister Maria."

"No."

"You are lying."

Charles turned toward the door. "This discussion is over."

Eleanor blocked him.

"No. It is beginning."

At that moment, another woman entered the room.

Isabel Whitmore.

Eleanor's eldest daughter.

She saw Sofia, then the matching necklaces.

Her face went white.

"Mother," she whispered, "why does the maid have mine?"

Sofia looked at Isabel.

The resemblance between them was impossible to ignore.

They had the same eyes.

The same smile.

The same face.

Only their lives were different.

One had grown up in luxury.

The other had grown up without a family.

Then Charles said quietly,

"Because one of you was never supposed to come home."