Chapter 22 - The Twin Clover
I didn't press her for answers right away.
Survival teaches you the difference between interrogation and hospitality. I led Clara down the hall to the guest suite on the ground floor, set a stack of fresh, thick cotton towels in her arms, and turned on the hot water in the adjoining bath. While she peeled off her sodden clothes and washed away the chill of the highway, I went into the kitchen.
I put a pot of homemade chicken bone broth on the stove, sliced thick slabs of sourdough bread, and brewed a pot of chamomile tea with raw clover honey. My hands were perfectly steady now. When crisis knocked at my door, the frantic panic of my twenties was long gone; in its place was the iron resolve of a woman who had defended her children from her own flesh and blood.
When Clara emerged twenty minutes later, she wore a pair of my oversized fleece sweatpants and a gray cashmere sweater I had laid out for her. Her wet auburn hair was combed back, revealing a pale, striking face devoid of makeup. She looked younger than twenty-four—vulnerable, but with a fierce, quiet intelligence behind her hazel eyes.
"Sit," I said softly, motioning toward the oak breakfast nook near the kitchen hearth. "Eat first. The world can wait until your stomach is full."
She hesitated, as if waiting for a catch, before slowly sliding into the booth. The moment she took the first spoonful of hot broth, she closed her eyes, and a deep, shuddering sigh rattled through her frame. She ate with the desperate, polite restraint of someone who hadn't seen a hot meal in days.
I sat across from her. On the polished table between us, I laid out two objects side by side.
On the left: Grandma Evelyn's handwritten letter, the 1965 Minnesota birth certificate, and my own silver clover pendant.
On the right: Clara’s pendant, which she had taken off her neck and set beside her bowl.
Under the warm amber pendant lights, the two silver clovers were identical in every microscopic detail. The delicate vine filigree, the tiny emerald embedded in the center stem, the microscopic maker's mark on the reverse: *E.V. 1964.*
Clara stared down at the documents, her spoon freezing in mid-air. Her eyes widened as she read Grandma's handwriting: *Clara’s daughter is the rightful co-heir to the Vance legacy. Find her before they do.*
"She knew?" Clara whispered, her voice trembling. "She actually knew about me?"
"She knew," I replied evenly. "Grandma Evelyn spent fifty years searching for the child she had been forced to surrender in closed adoption. In the 1960s, a young unmarried woman in Chicago society had no choices. Her family sent her away to Minnesota, hid the birth, and took her baby before she could even hold her. Grandma spent the rest of her life trying to undo that sin."
Clara swallowed hard, her fingers lightly brushing the edge of the yellowed birth certificate. "My mother’s name was Laura. She grew up in foster homes across Wisconsin and Minnesota. She never knew who her parents were. She spent her life working as a hospital clerk, scrimping every penny, praying that one day a letter would come."
A bitter smile touched Clara's lips. "When Mom got sick with cancer last year, a private investigator from Chicago contacted her out of the blue. He said an old woman was dying and wanted to make things right. He gave Mom that silver clover pendant and a small trust account to cover her medical hospice. He said a grand estate in Oregon belonged to her family."
"Arthur Vance," I said immediately. "Grandma’s private estate attorney."
"No," Clara shook her head, her eyes darkening. "That wasn't his name. The investigator called himself Thomas Cole. But two weeks after Mom passed, Cole stopped answering his phone. Then, last Wednesday, two men kicked down the door of my apartment. They tore the mattresses apart, ransacked my closets, and shouted into their phones that 'the original surrender release wasn't here.' I hid in the alley behind the trash bins until they left in a black sedan with Illinois plates."
My jaw clenched until the muscles ached.
Illinois plates.
Melinda had been sentenced to diversion in Illinois. Catherine was stuck in an assisted living center near Chicago. Neither of them had the money or the legal standing to hire private enforcers.
Unless someone else had financed them.
"Did you hear any names?" I asked, my voice deadly quiet. "When they were searching your apartment?"
Clara looked up, her gaze steady and lucid. "The man who tore up my mother's desk... he was talking on speakerphone to an older woman. The woman had a high, raspy, angry voice. She kept screaming: *Find the birth record! If Bonnie or Arthur get their hands on that girl, the codicil triggers and we lose the commercial trust!*"
A cold chill ran down my spine, followed instantly by the blazing heat of pure fury.
Catherine.
May you like
Even locked away in subsidized elder care, even stripped of her home and her status, my mother was still pulling strings, still trying to claw her claws into Grandma Evelyn's empire. And she wasn't acting alone.
"Clara," I said, reaching across the table and taking her cold, trembling hand in mine. "You're safe here. Nobody crosses this gate without my permission, and the local sheriff knows what my family has been through. Tomorrow morning, Arthur Vance lands in Portland. We are going to find out exactly what codicil my mother is terrified of."
