Chapter 17 - VALERIE’S LAST SECRET
Valerie was not dead.
That was the first thing police told me.
There was no evidence she entered the lake.
No blood.
No suicide note.
No sign of violence.
The envelope was not opened until investigators cleared it.
Inside was a flash drive.
One handwritten letter.
And a key.
Lucy,
If you are reading this, Alex knows I told the truth.
I do not think he will hurt me physically.
But I no longer trust what he is capable of when he believes his identity is being taken from him.
He needs to be the good man in every story.
When evidence says otherwise, he changes the story.
The key is for a storage locker at Union Station.
Everything I kept is there.
I am sorry I made you part of a competition you never agreed to enter.
You were his wife.
I was the person he kept rescuing because I kept giving him reasons.
Ava died three years ago.
I think part of me died with her.
Alex made me feel like I still mattered.
I mistook that for love.
Maybe he did too.
But what happened in the elevator was not love.
It was proof of how sick all of this became.
Please protect your daughter.
Valerie.
The storage locker contained three boxes.
Medical records.
Bank statements.
Printed messages.
Photographs.
And one sealed file labeled AVA.
Inside was Ava’s birth certificate.
Father unknown.
Then a DNA report.
My hands stopped.
Probability of paternity: 99.98%.
Alleged father: Alexander Davis.
For several seconds, I could not breathe.
Rachel read it twice.
“This changes the financial picture.”
I barely heard her.
Alex had told me Ava was not his.
Valerie had told me the father was absent.
Both had lied.
Why?
Another envelope explained.
The DNA test had been done after Ava died.
Valerie apparently suspected Alex but had never told him before the test.
Or so her notes claimed.
Then I found a message printed beneath it.
Valerie: She was yours.
Alex: No.
Valerie: I have the test.
Alex: Lucy can never know.
My chest tightened.
Another message.
Alex: If she knows I had a child with you while we were married, she leaves.
While we were married.
The room disappeared around me.
Three years ago.
Alex and I had been married.
Valerie had not just been his emotional affair.
Ava had been conceived during our marriage.
I read one final message.
Valerie: You said you loved me.
Alex: I did.
Valerie: Past tense?
Alex: I don’t know anymore.
Valerie: Then stop pretending Lucy is the reason you stay.
Alex: Lucy is the reason I still look like myself.
I sat back.
That sentence explained everything.
I was not his great love.
I was his evidence.
His respectable marriage.
His proof that he was still the man everyone believed him to be.
I picked up my phone.
One message waited from Alex.
May you like
I know what she left you.
Please let me explain Ava.
