Chapter 78 - The Trust of 1974
"What are you talking about?" Melissa whispered, looking between me and the legal folders scattered across the pine table. "Mother told me the trust money was tied to the land. She said if I gave Lily to you to hold the residence requirement, we’d split the trust fund when she turned ten!"
"The trust fund never belonged to your branch of the family, Melissa," I said, never taking my eyes off Greg, who remained crouched near the hearth, nursing his injured hand. "The diocesan trust was established by Evelyn's father for the child of his eldest daughter—my mother, not Evelyn. Evelyn was an adopted ward of the parish, brought in after the original heirs died in the flu outbreak of 1918."
Greg’s head snapped up. "That’s impossible. Evelyn controls the estate."
"She controls the forged leases," I replied. "Julian found the church register in the safe-deposit box, but he couldn't read the Latin entries. The property reverts to the direct blood descendant of the Van Der Bilt bloodline. Lily isn't Melissa’s child. Melissa never gave birth to her."
Melissa’s eyes darted frantically around the room, guilt and terror warring on her painted face. "Nora, don't say it... please don't say it..."
"Tell him, Melissa," I commanded. "Tell Greg where you really got that baby nine years ago, when you showed up at the hospital after disappearing for eight months in Montreal."
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The silence in the cabin grew thick, heavy with the stench of long-buried rot. Melissa slid down the rough logs until she was sitting on the dirty floorboards, burying her face in her manicured hands.
"The clinic," she sobbed, her shoulders heaving with ugly, ragged gasps. "Mother paid the director thirty thousand dollars to take an unregistered infant from the ward after the mother died in labor. She gave her to me to pretend she was mine, so the Van Der Bilt trust wouldn't revert to the state. But she was never mine. She was never mine at all."
