“Someone paid me to meet you.”
It felt as though someone had struck me in the chest.
“Who?”
He lowered his head.
“The person you trusted more than anyone else.”
I began listing names. My father had died long ago. My mother had been against our marriage. I also thought of my older sister, Elizabeth, who had passed away years earlier.
Robert stood up, went into the bedroom, and returned with an old envelope.
“This was given to me the day I first walked into your bookstore.”
I opened the envelope.
Inside was a photograph of me when I was young, an old hundred-dollar bill, and a handwritten letter.
On the back of the photograph, someone had written:
“Don’t leave this girl alone. She still doesn’t know what really happened to her family.”
I recognized the handwriting immediately.
It was my mother’s handwriting.
But the most frightening thing was the second photograph inside the envelope.
