The Secret Between Two Friends
Chapter 05 - The Secret Between Two Friends
Ray stared at Lily as though the young woman had pulled a gun.
"What did Sarah say about me?"
Lily removed another folded page.
"She said you were there the last night she saw Ethan."
Ethan stood.
"I was never there."
"No," Lily said. "Ray was."
Ray closed his eyes.
The truth finally came out.
The night Sarah left, Ray had met her secretly at a gas station outside Santa Cruz.
Sarah was crying.
Dominic had threatened to frame Ethan for a serious crime if she refused to disappear.
She begged Ray to help her.
Instead, Ray told her to go.
Ethan's chair crashed backward.
"You sent her away?"
"I was twenty-six!" Ray shouted. "Dominic had cops in his pocket. He had money. He had people everywhere."
"She was pregnant!"
"I didn't know!"
"She loved me!"
"I know!"
Ethan grabbed Ray's vest.
For a terrible moment, Lily thought the two men would fight.
Then Ray said something that stopped him.
"She made me promise not to tell you."
Ethan released him.
"What?"
"She said she'd contact you when it was safe."
"But she never did."
Ray looked at Lily.
"Maybe someone made sure she couldn't."
Lily remembered something from her mother's metal box.
A stack of letters.
All addressed to Ethan.
All returned unopened.
But Ethan had never seen a single one.
Someone had been intercepting Sarah's letters for years.
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And Lily suddenly realized the story was much bigger than a frightened young woman running away.
Someone had worked very hard to keep a father and daughter apart.
