“Well,” Linda paused, her brow furrowing. “Now that you mention it, there was a woman who came by last week during the evening shift change. Around 8:15 PM. She said she was a cousin from out of town.

I told her visiting hours were over, but she looked so desperate. I might have let her slip in for five minutes while I was doing my charting. I didn’t think it would hurt anyone.”

My jaw tightened. “Did she have dark hair? Was she wearing a dark coat?”

“Yes,” Linda said, looking a little guilty now. “I’m sorry, Clara. Did she cause trouble?”

“No,” I whispered. “No trouble.”

I walked down to the basement cafeteria. I didn’t get coffee. I just sat at one of the sticky laminate tables under the harsh fluorescent lights and stared at my hands.

They were shaking.

I took out my phone and dialed our family lawyer, a man named Bob who had handled my father’s estate. We had known him for years.

“Bob,” I said as soon as he answered. “I need you to look up David’s father’s will. The original one from 1998. And I need to know if there’s any mention of a trust or an adoption.”

Bob sounded confused. “Clara, what is this about? David’s father passed fifteen years ago.”

“Just please look,” I begged, my voice breaking. “I have a really bad feeling about this.”

He sighed. “Okay. Give me an hour. I’ll have my secretary pull the archive files from the basement.”

I didn’t go back to David’s room right away. I went to the hospital chapel, a tiny, windowless room with two wooden pews and a fake stained-glass lamp. I sat there in the silence, trying to make the pieces fit.

Mark had been so eager to help with the bills. He kept asking me to sign a power of attorney so he could “handle the business accounts.” He said it would take the pressure off me.

I had almost signed it. I had the paper sitting in my purse right now.

Forty-five minutes later, my phone buzzed. It was Bob.

“Clara,” his voice was different now. The casual, friendly tone was completely gone. It was sharp, professional, and very quiet. “Are you in a safe place to talk?”

“Yes,” I said, clutching the phone to my ear. “What did you find?”

“There is a rider attached to the original partnership agreement of the construction company,” Bob said. “It was drafted by David’s father before he d*ed. It states that if David is ever deemed legally incompetent or if he… passes away without biological heirs, his entire fifty-percent share of the company assets reverts immediately to Mark. But there’s also a secondary file. An adoption disclosure. David was adopted in 1974. From a private clinic in Cleveland. And Clara… there was a twin sister listed on the original surrender documents. A girl named Sarah.”

I felt a cold, hard knot form in my chest.

It was all true.