“Or for whatever reason they ran out of time,” I said. “Maybe they hid what they could and hoped no one would notice.”
She slid the two halves together like puzzle pieces, tapping them straight.
A faint couple of words written in pen stretched across the tab.
A name.
Ro Ster.
My stomach tightened.
“You recognize the name, don’t you?”
“Celia’s friend Chelle told me something when I was at her house,” I said. “She claimed Celia once admitted Holly’s biological father was famous. At the time, I was thinking if she was right, her father might be an actor or a singer.”
“And now?”
I reached for my phone and typed a surname into a search bar.
A page filled the screen.
Wyatt Sterling’s father, Sebastian, had once been a well-known politician who stood at the edge of a presidential run. His campaign ended before it began when he had a heart attack and died.
Scanning the page to find the date of his death, I gasped.
It turned out Sebastian died the same year Celia moved back to Cambria.
“What is it?” my mother asked.
“I found a connection,” I said. “One I never expected.”
“Does this mean one of the Sterlings fathered Holly?”
“It seems so.”
I pushed back from the table and grabbed my coat.
“Now, hold on just a minute,” my mother said.
“Mom, I have to go.”
“I’m not trying to stop you. But I’ll not let you go alone.”
“I can handle myself.”
“I know you can,” she said as she picked up her scarf. “This isn’t up for negotiation.”
I stood still for a moment, even though I knew there was nothing I could do, no sense in trying to talk her out of it.
“Fine,” I said.
I killed the dining room lights, took one last look at the shredded box on the table, and stepped into the cold night determined to push my way into the Sterlings’ perfect world and force it to crack.
13
Warm bulbs glowed through the windows of the Sterling home, casting a soft shine over the manicured lawn and the tall cedar trimmed to resemble a Christmas tree. It looked like the perfect house for a perfect family, the kind neighbors envied. But I had learned long ago that the families that seemed perfect on the outside often harbored the biggest secrets.
My mother stood beside me on the front walk, her scarf pulled tight as she studied the house. “It looks peaceful, doesn’t it?”
