PART 2
The black screen stared back at me like an open wound.
“Come alone if you want to learn why Daniel married you.”
The words repeated inside my head until they became deafening.
I turned toward my parents.
“Who is Claire?”
Neither answered.
“She’s your daughter, isn’t she? Your real daughter.”
Mom opened her mouth, but no words came.
Dad looked like a man watching floodwater reach his front door.
“Tell me.”
Outside, the rain had turned into a storm.
Maybe it had been raging for hours.
I hadn’t noticed.
Mom stepped toward me slowly.
“Claire was the child of a witness we protected,” she said.
“In the case. The one that collapsed.”
“Yes.”
“And you raised her? With me?”
Dad finally spoke.
“We tried.”
“Tried?”
“She was difficult.” His voice cracked. “Wild. Angry.”
“A sleepy suburban rebellion or something worse?”
Mom winced.
“We sent her to private schools. Therapists. She burned through all of it.”
Dad looked toward the window.
“When she was seventeen, she found out about the witness protection.”
“What part?”
“That her father was the informant. That we took her in to protect her from the people he exposed.”
“And she hated you for it.”
“She hated everyone,” Mom said. “Including you.”
That hit harder than I expected.
“Why would she hate me?”
“Because you had the life she wanted. The company. The name. The future.”
“And she had a shadow identity that could never come into the light.”
Dad turned back to me.
