Page 94 of I Will Find You

“Almost all the witnesses were local experts.”

“Except one,” Gertrude said. “That woman who lied about seeing him with the baseball bat.”

Hayden nodded slowly. “Could be.”

That had puzzled her, of course. They’d known the woman was lying. They had no idea why.

“I’m tired of hiding him, Pixie.”

“I know, Hayden.”

“He has Payne blood coursing through his veins.”

“I know that too.”

“We even ran the tests. He’s my son. Your great-grandson. He’s a Payne man, after all.”

She almost smiled at that. A Payne man. Like that was a good thing. The damage those men had done. Surprise pregnancies, blackmail, extortion, even murder—all covered up with the mighty dollar. Back in the day, Gertrude hadn’t been surprised in the least by the Kennedy Chappaquiddick incident—she had only been surprised that it hadn’t been covered up before word leaked out. That sort of thing happened a lot. The rich pay off the family. That’s the carrot. But the rich use the stick too. Sure, you could try to stand up for the loved one who’d been knocked up or injured or killed, but it will only make it all much worse in the end. You’ll never get justice. The rich will deny and obfuscate and bribe and pressure and bankrupt and sue and threaten and if none of that works—and that almost always works—you’ll be made to disappear. Or maybe you have other children who will suffer. Something. Anything.

So when you wonder how a family can seemingly take money in exchange for something like the death of a daughter, it isn’t because they are greedy or immoral.

It is because they have no choice.

“I know, Hayden,” she told him.

“There has to be another way.”

Gertrude did not respond.

“Maybe,” Hayden said, “the truth should come out.”

“No,” she said.

“I mean, even if they somehow find Theo—”

“Hayden?”

“—what can they prove?”

“Hayden, stop.”

Her tone silenced him more than her words.

“We will make arrangements for you both to leave this afternoon,” she said, ending the conversation. “In the meantime, I don’t want that boy to leave the estate.”

Part 3

Chapter

27

Had David seen the lie on her face?

Rachel almost told him the truth. Maybe she should have, who knew? But right now, she needed David to trust her absolutely. If he understood the truth about Cheryl’s visit to that fertility clinic, the full truth, he might push her away. They couldn’t afford that. So for now, right or wrong, Rachel would have to go with deceit. Remaining his ally was more important than honesty.

After David left for Pop’s Garage, Rachel combed through the photographs yet again—this time with a new goal in mind. She was looking for a familiar face, one David wouldn’t really know. To her relief, she didn’t find it. There was still a chance that David was wrong—that the Berg Reproductive Institute being one of the sponsors at the amusement park that day was a coincidence—but the more Rachel thought about it, the more she realized that there had to be something to it.

But how did the fertility clinic fit into all this?

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