Page 61 of Buried Secrets

She opened her email client, cursor blinking in the empty message field. Started typing, then deleted everything. Tried again.

Dear Ryan…

No. Too formal.

Hi Ryan…

Too casual for something this momentous.

Ryan…

Just his name, floating alone on the white screen like an island.

How did you explain a lifetime of absence in a single email? How did you convey the weight of shared genetics, of parallel searches, of questions that had shaped both their lives without ever knowing the other existed?

Kaitlin’s hands hovered over the keyboard. Once she sent this message, there would be no taking it back. Ryan’s life would change just as dramatically as hers had in the past hour.

But didn’t he deserve to know? They both deserved the chance to fill the gaps in their stories, to understand the circumstances that had scattered their family to the winds.

She began to type, slowly at first, then with growing certainty.

Ryan,

I hope this message doesn’t come as too much of a shock. My name is Kaitlin Mathews, and according to the genetic matching on MyFamilyDNA, we’re half siblings. I was adopted in 1991 in England, but I believe I was born here on Widow’s Point.

I’ve been searching for my biological family my entire life.

I know this must be overwhelming. It certainly is for me. But if you’re interested in connecting, I’d love to learn more about your story. Maybe together we can piece together what happened all those years ago.

My phone number is below if you’d prefer to talk rather than email.

Hoping to hear from you,Kaitlin

She read through the message three times, making small adjustments, before her mouse hovered over the send button. This was it. The moment that would either bring her the family she’d always dreamed of, or add another layer of rejection to the wounds she already carried.

The cursor blinked accusingly.

Outside her window, rain had begun to fall against the glass, each drop catching the lamplight like tiny prisms. Beyond the trees in her driveway, the mansion taunted her to press send.

Somewhere out there, Ryan was living his life, unaware that in the next few minutes his phone might chime with news that would change everything.

And somewhere on this very island, her mother was perhaps making tea or reading a book, completely oblivious to the fact that the daughter she’d given away had finally found her.

Or was she not oblivious? Had she known who Kaitlin was when she and Matt visited her? It had been a week already. If she had, she’d stayed silent.

Kaitlin closed her eyes, drew in a shaky breath, and clicked send.

The message disappeared into the digital ether, carrying with it years of questions and the fragile hope that some of them might finally have answers.

Now all she could do was wait.

The rain drummed against Matt’s windshield like skeletal fingers tapping on glass as he pulled into Marissa Lane’s driveway, each droplet catching his headlights before sliding into darkness. The small house sat back from the road, its windows glowing warm yellow against the October night. He sat for a moment in his cruiser, engine idling, watching water cascade down the glass and distort the view.

The manila folder lay on the passenger seat, test results printed in clinical black and white. The numbers didn’t lie, even when everything else seemed to. Marissa Lane’s son Ryan was a twenty percent maternal DNA match to victim two. Which meant Marissa was the dead woman’s sister and knew much more than she had previously revealed.

Matt’s jaw tightened as he thought of Kaitlin, probably still in her cottage, processing the revelation he’d delivered with all the warmth of a coroner’s report. The memory of the hope and devastation her face when he’d told her about her mother being alive twisted in his chest.

She’d lied to him. For weeks, she’d sat across from him in interviews, shared meals, let him trust her, all while maintaining an elaborate fiction about her research. Every conversation they’d had was built on deception.