Chapter 6 – THE DAUGHTER WHO WAS STOLEN
The next morning, Sophie drove Eleanor and Samuel to Burlington, Vermont.
Grace Morgan was now thirty-five years old.
She worked as an elementary schoolteacher.
She had a modest apartment, a rescue dog named Milo, and no idea that her birth family owned a billion-dollar empire.
For years, she believed her biological mother had abandoned her.
Helen Price, the woman who had raised her, had told her that Eleanor was dangerous and didn’t want her daughter back.
Grace was organizing books in an empty classroom when Eleanor appeared at the doorway.
The elderly woman stopped breathing for a moment.
There she was.
Her little girl.
Grown into a woman.
“Grace?”
The teacher turned.
“Can I help you?”
Eleanor took a trembling step forward.
“My name is Eleanor Whitmore.”
Grace’s expression changed.
“I know that name.”
Sophie moved closer.
“She’s your mother.”
Grace stepped backward.
“No. My mother is dead.”
Eleanor reached inside her old cloth bag.
She took out a small white stuffed rabbit.
Its left ear had been repaired with red thread.
Grace’s face drained of color.
She remembered the rabbit.
She remembered the needle marks.
And she remembered a woman singing to her whenever she couldn’t sleep.
“Where did you get that?”
Eleanor began singing the first lines of the lullaby.
Grace covered her mouth.
Tears spilled down her cheeks.
“Mommy?”
Eleanor reached for her.
And after twenty-eight years, mother and daughter embraced.
But Samuel’s phone rang.
It was his investigator.
The results of the property audit had arrived.
Several Whitmore corporate subsidiaries had been used to transfer hundreds of millions of dollars into accounts linked to Victoria.
And the first transfer had occurred six months before the fire.
This meant Victoria hadn’t simply taken advantage of Eleanor’s disappearance.
She had been preparing for it.
Grace told Eleanor, “Mom, I remember the night they took me. Victoria wasn’t alone. Richard was there.”