CHAPTER 4 - What the Sisters Inherited
The investigation uncovered two separate betrayals.
Aunt Lydia had deliberately separated the sisters because the family trust became easier to control with only one beneficiary. She intercepted Anna's childhood letters and convinced Celeste that her sister had died.
After Lydia's death, Marcus discovered the deception.
Instead of telling Celeste, he continued it.
He forged documents, blocked Anna's letters, and transferred trust money into private investments. He planned to sell the family company after gaining full control.
The board removed him immediately.
Celeste filed for divorce, and prosecutors opened a fraud investigation.
Yet Anna did not celebrate.
"You lost your marriage because I came back," she told Celeste.
"No. I discovered my marriage because you came back."
The sisters completed DNA testing, officially confirming what their matching pendants and childhood memories had already proven.
Celeste offered Anna half of the estate.
Anna hesitated.
"I don't want you to think I came for this."
"It was stolen from you. Returning it is not charity."
Anna accepted only after Esther helped place the assets under her independent control.
The money changed her circumstances, but it did not instantly repair their relationship.
Anna became uncomfortable whenever servants approached her. Celeste sometimes asked too many questions, desperate to recover eighteen years in one afternoon.
They argued.
They cried.
Then they learned to apologize.
One evening, Celeste visited Anna's small apartment. She found a box containing handmade birthday cards.
There was one for every year they had been separated.
"Why did you make these if you couldn't send them?" Celeste asked.
"Because you were still my sister, even when I thought I wasn't yours."
Celeste held the cards against her chest.
The first had been drawn by a seven-year-old child. The last had been made only weeks earlier.
That night, Celeste brought out a second box.
May you like
Inside were eighteen unopened birthday gifts she had purchased for the sister she believed was dead.
The two women had spent eighteen years loving each other in separate rooms built from the same lie.
