Chapter 3 - The Woman at the Door"I know you have questions," the voice said through the door.
My hand moved toward the handle. My heart was slamming against my ribs.
"Who are you?" I asked, even though I already knew.
A pause. Then: "I'm the woman your father spent fifteen years trying to make you forget."
My fingers touched the handle. Before I could turn it, Derek grabbed my arm — gently, not to stop me, but to warn me.
"Naomi." His voice had dropped to barely a whisper. "Don't open that door until you're ready for what's on the other side."
I looked between him and the door. The past. The present. The secrets that somehow tied both of our families together in ways neither of us understood yet.
Then the voice spoke again, and this time the words changed everything.
"Naomi — there's something you need to know. Your father wasn't the only one who kept the truth from you."
I opened the door.
Standing in the hallway was the woman I had spent fifteen years believing was gone for good.
My mother.
She wasn't alone. Beside her stood another woman, holding an old photograph — a family portrait taken the year before my mother disappeared.
And in that photograph, standing exactly where a family portrait should never have room for a stranger, was someone I had never met in my life.
May you like
Someone my father had erased from every memory I owned.
Someone who looked exactly like me.
