Chapter 6 - March 12
I remembered March 12.
Ethan had told me he was in Colorado Springs for work.
He hadn't been.
When I confronted him, he didn't lie.
Not this time.
He sat at the kitchen table and admitted he had met Linda.
She had called him claiming she was seriously ill.
When he arrived, she wasn't sick.
She wanted him to sign papers.
“What papers?”
“I didn't read all of them.”
My stomach turned.
“You signed something without reading it?”
He lowered his head.
“Yes.”
The papers supposedly authorized access to childhood medical records.
Ethan had signed them to stop an argument.
That signature might have given Linda the piece she needed to create additional forged documents.
I was furious.
Not because Ethan had knowingly participated.
Because his lifelong habit of surrendering to his mother had consequences.
“You kept choosing the easiest five minutes,” I told him, “and leaving me with the hardest five years.”
He didn't defend himself.
“I know.”
That night he slept in the guest room.
The next morning, Detective Martinez called.
They had identified the third woman in the photograph.
Her name was Natalie Crane.
May you like
She worked at the fertility center.
And she had disappeared.
