His voice softened immediately.
“Carl didn’t leave because he stopped loving you.”
I stared at him.
“He left because someone told him that if he kept investigating Emily’s disappearance, you and Lily could be pulled into it too.”
My anger faltered.
“What does that mean?”
“He never explained exactly. He only said there was something wrong with the twins’ birth records.”
The twins’ birth records.
I looked toward the hallway.
Lily was asleep upstairs.
My surviving daughter.
Or at least the daughter I had believed was my only surviving child.
“What was wrong with them?”
Dad pointed toward the envelope.
“Carl wanted you to hear that from him.”
I looked down.
My name was written across the front.
Sarah.
I recognized the handwriting instantly.
Thirteen years disappeared.
I remembered grocery lists on the refrigerator.
Birthday cards.
Little notes Carl used to leave beside the coffee maker.
Love you. Have a good day.
Same handwriting.
My thumb slipped beneath the flap.
Inside were several folded pages.
I opened them.
Sarah,
If you are reading this, Lily is eighteen.
I stopped.
Dad watched silently.
I continued.
I have imagined you reading this letter thousands of times, and there is no version in which you don’t hate me.
You should.
I allowed you to believe our daughter was dead.
I allowed Lily to grow up believing her sister was buried in a cemetery.
And I disappeared.
But before you decide that I did those things because I stopped loving you, please read everything.
My vision blurred.
I wiped my eyes.
The letter continued.
The night Emily became ill, the doctors ordered several tests because her symptoms didn’t make sense. One of those tests revealed a rare inherited blood disorder.
But that wasn’t the discovery that frightened them.
The genetic screening showed that something in Emily’s records did not match the records from the twins’ birth.
I didn’t understand at first.
Then a nurse named Rebecca Hale found me alone and told me quietly that Emily’s medical identification number had been duplicated.
Someone had created a second medical record using her information.
I stared at the page.
A second record?
Deel 2: Mijn man verliet me nadat we een van onze tweelingdochters verloren t1
