I barely managed to type:
“What document?”
Susan replied:
The birth certificate.
I looked at Grandpa.
He stood up immediately.
“No.”
“What do you mean, no?”
“She wasn’t supposed to find that.”
That was when I understood the most important thing.
Grandpa hadn’t just been hiding some old family secret.
He knew what was on that birth certificate.
“Grandpa… who is Anna’s father?”
He said nothing.
My phone vibrated again.
Susan’s final message.
Don’t ask George who Anna’s father is. Ask him why Linda’s name is listed there as the mother.
My hands went cold.
I looked at Grandpa.
He sat down in the chair.
And for the first time in my life, I watched him cry.
“Emily,” he said, “your mother has hidden a lot from you. But this one… even she doesn’t know the whole truth.”
And at that exact moment, someone knocked on the front door.
Grandpa
didn’t move.
I walked toward it.
Opened the door.
Two women were standing outside.
One was Susan.
The other was the woman from the photograph.
Anna.
She looked at me for several seconds, then said,
“You’re Emily, aren’t you?”
I nodded.
Her eyes filled with tears.
“Then I came to the right house.”
And from the kitchen, Grandpa whispered one sentence that finally changed everything.
“Call Linda. It’s time both sisters learned what really happened in 1989.”
