From: Ellie Hastings
To: Isobel James
I learned something, and it might be the best shot I have to get answers to the questions overwhelming my mind.
Your murderer, the vile man in the photo with you and Ethan, has a younger brother who’s still alive, and I’m going to see him.
Commissioner Brown tells me that I may not see him myself. But I will. I need to look into his eyes and see his truth when he answers my questions.
You know me, Isobel. When I want something badly enough, I find a way to get it.
But there’s something else. Jess retrieved copies of your medical records for me when she and Ben were in Connecticut last week, and the document in front of me confirms what I suspected. It also breaks my heart.
Your suffering was real, Isobel. I held you as you cried, kissed your salty cheeks, cared for you when you were broken. That was genuine pain. I feel it again now.
The records reveal that you were pregnant, not with Lissie, with your own child. There was a baby growing inside of you—yours. When Gran sent you away to have the baby after your husband left, you miscarried your own child.
I’m so sorry.
These are the only leads I have at this point, so I’ll follow them as far as they will take me. I can think of nothing worse than what you went through, losing a baby you had been planning a beautiful life for. But it doesn’t erase the betrayal that lies beneath the secret you buried, and it must be uncovered, no matter the pain it causes.
Your secret must be exposed because in the end, after this lie implodes, there will be something good that Will and I can salvage from the rubble.
Once upon a time, in a faraway land, I was the girl who ran whenever she sensed something might break her heart. But that’s no longer me. Not since Will came into my life. He is my salvation in a sea of devastation, the gain that God handed me after enduring so much loss in my twenty-seven years.
That’s how I know there’s something worth fighting for at the bottom of this well of deception.
My family needs this one last truth set free. Like I said, you know me, Isobel. I’m going to set the damn thing free.