Chapter 4 - The Emerald Necklace
The archive room felt like it was spinning.
Ask her what she sold me the night her husband died.
“She’s lying,” I said, my voice trembling with rage. “My mother was at the hospital that night. She never spoke to the Ashfords.”
“Vivienne is a cornered animal right now,” Marco warned, slipping his phone into his pocket. “Cornered animals lash out. But they also make mistakes.”
I grabbed the photograph and the folder. “I’m going to St. Agnes Hospital. If Vivienne is trying to discredit my mother, I need to know why she tried to block my nursing job specifically at that hospital.”
Marco nodded. “I’ll dig into the land transfer. Be careful, Claire. Vivienne’s family uses people like chess pieces.”
I took the bus straight to St. Agnes. I hadn’t officially started my job, but my badge was already activated at the security desk.
I found Elaine Porter in her glass-walled office, packing a cardboard box.
“Elaine?” I knocked gently. “Are you moving offices?”
Elaine looked up, her face drawn and exhausted. She set down a framed family photo. “I’m being forced into early retirement, Claire. As of an hour ago.”
My stomach plummeted. “Because you defended me at the dinner?”
“Because Vivienne Ashford’s uncle sits on the hospital board of directors,” Elaine said with a bitter smile. “He called an emergency session this morning. They claimed I mishandled staffing budgets. But we both know what this is.”
“I am so sorry,” I whispered, guilt crashing over me.
Elaine waved a hand dismissively. “Don’t be. I’ve been looking for an excuse to leave this bureaucratic nightmare. But before my access is revoked at 5:00 PM, I looked into the hospital’s archive system. You need to see this.”
She turned her monitor toward me.
It was an admission log from twenty years ago. The night my father died.
The record showed my father was brought into St. Agnes at 10:15 PM. But he wasn’t alone in the trauma bay.
Admitted at 10:17 PM, with minor lacerations and a concussion from the same vehicle accident, was an eighteen-year-old Vivienne Ashford.
“She was in the car,” I breathed, pressing my hand to my mouth. “Vivienne was the one who hit him. That’s why there were no witnesses. Her father covered it up.”
“Look at the bottom of the page,” Elaine instructed softly.
There was a scanned image of a hospital intake form. Attached to the form was a handwritten note from the emergency room nurse on duty that night.
Patient’s wife (Mrs. Bennett) surrendered personal collateral to Mr. Arthur Ashford in the waiting room to cover emergency surgical fees.
Elaine reached into her desk drawer and pulled out a small, sealed evidence bag.
“When the old hospital safe was cleaned out during renovations last year, they found an envelope marked with your mother’s name. The board told me to destroy it. I kept it in my desk.”
She slid the bag across the desk.
May you like
Inside was a delicate, vintage emerald necklace.
It was the necklace my father had given my mother on their wedding day. The one she told me she had lost in the chaos of the funeral.
