Chapter 6 - The Forged Cradle
The flickering dashboard light illuminated the burnt edges of the adoption paper, the smell of charred paper seeming to bleed right through the manila envelope and into the leather-scented air of the car. Clara stared at the names printed above her mother’s signature—names she had never heard before, associated with dates that stretched back decades before she was even born.
“She collects them,” Julian said, his voice cutting through the hum of the engine like a dull knife. “Every twelve years, when the gallery opens a new exhibition, Eleanor finds a new little girl with the exact same wavy brown hair and puts her in a pale blue dress. She plays the weeping mother at the banquet table to perfection, doesn’t she?”
“That’s a lie,” Clara whispered, though the words felt hollow and weightless on her tongue. She thought of the countless times Eleanor had wept softly into her hands while staring at empty picture frames in their hallway. “She loves me. She taught me how to read the green book.”
“That green book isn’t a photo album, Clara,” Julian laughed softly, a dry, bitter sound. “It’s a ledger. Every picture in there represents a child who disappeared from the Carlyle estate the night of the fire. And you’re the last one left.”
Clara’s hand trembled as she flipped open the green book to a page she had never noticed before—a page sealed shut with yellowed cellophane tape. She pulled at the corner with her fingernail, tearing the paper away to reveal a hidden roster of names written in her mother’s unmistakable, precise handwriting, complete with financial payouts and dates of relocation.
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Julian suddenly slammed on the brakes, throwing the car into a violent skid that sent gravel spraying against the concrete guardrail as they came to a dead stop at the edge of a desolate cliffside overlook.
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