Chapter 3 - DENISE CARTER RANAuthorities located Denise’s apartment.
Empty.
Clothes missing.
Cash gone.
No sign of violence.
She had fled.
That made Mia cry.
“She left because I messed up.”
“No.”
The child advocate corrected gently.
“You spilling food did not make an adult leave.”
Mia didn’t believe it immediately.
Why would she?
Children often assume adult chaos begins with them because adults rarely explain anything honestly.
Investigators found documents in the apartment.
Mia Carter’s birth certificate.
Issued late.
Not at birth.
Age four.
Supporting record based on sworn affidavit.
No hospital listed.
No father.
Mother:
Denise Carter.
But Denise had been only nineteen when Mia was supposedly born.
Possible.
Except old social media records showed Denise spending that year in Arizona.
Mia had lived in Massachusetts.
The paperwork was false.
Then police found something behind a dresser.
A photograph.
Mia as a toddler.
Beside another woman.
Not Denise.
Rebecca Whitmore.
Elias’s daughter.
Alive in the photograph.
Holding Mia.
On the back was a date.
Three months before the fire.
No doubt anymore about one thing.
Denise had known Rebecca.
May you like
The question became:
How?
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