Emma nodded.
“So you both help sick kids.”
“We try,” Rebecca said.
Then came the conversation Emma had been dreading.
They needed to check on Sarah.
Daniel promised again: no calls to social services without talking to Emma first. Using his medical credentials, he called Northwestern Memorial.
When he returned, his face was carefully calm.
“Your mother is alive. She has severe pneumonia, but she is responding to treatment. They expect she’ll need at least another week in the hospital.”
Relief hit Emma so hard she almost cried into her pancakes.
“Can we see her?”
“We’ll try to arrange a visit,” Rebecca said. “But the hospital will have questions.”
“You promised.”
“And we will keep that promise,” Daniel said. “But we need a plan.”
They told her that Sarah had listed a neighbor, Margaret Winters, as an emergency contact. Miss Maggie. Emma remembered her: gray hair, sharp eyes, cinnamon coffee, and a way of seeing lies before people finished telling them. She was out of town for the holidays, unreachable.
That day passed in strange comfort.
Rebecca fed Lily.
Emma allowed it for more than a few seconds, which felt like handing over part of her own heart.
Daniel bought her warm clothes, a real winter coat, jeans, sweaters, socks. Emma cried in the shower with the water running so nobody would hear.
That night, she sat alone on the guest bed and studied the silver locket.
It was not heart-shaped like the ones in stores. It was oval, engraved with tiny patterns that seemed decorative until you looked too long. There was no obvious seam.
Emma pressed the surface.
Nothing.
She turned it.
Pressed again.
A soft click.
The locket opened.
Not to a photograph.
To a folded strip of microfilm and a tiny key.
Emma’s heart pounded.
On the microfilm were numbers, letters, and a name:
Alexander Webb.
Boston University.
Department of Archaeology.
She had no idea what it meant.
But she knew it mattered.
The next day, Daniel and Rebecca took Emma and Lily to see Sarah.
The hospital corridor felt endless. Daniel moved ahead with the easy authority of a doctor. Rebecca carried Lily in a soft yellow blanket. Emma clutched her backpack, the locket hidden inside like a burning secret.
Sarah Riley looked smaller in the hospital bed than Emma had ever seen her.
Her hair was limp. Her cheeks hollow. Machines blinked beside her. But when she saw Emma, her eyes filled.
“Emma.”
Emma ran to her.
“I kept Lily safe, Mom. Like I promised.”
“My brave girl,” Sarah whispered. “Where’s Lily?”
Rebecca brought the baby forward. Sarah held her with trembling arms and kissed her forehead.
Then Sarah saw Daniel.
Her expression changed.
“Thompson?” she whispered. “Daniel Thompson?”
The air in the room tightened.
Emma saw it immediately.