The Reading of the Will
The Fifth Signature

Imogen

August 25, 2026 · Part 7 of 10 · 2 min

I told Sebastian I was visiting a friend for the weekend. It wasn't entirely a lie — I needed to see a face that would tell me the truth, and I was starting to think that face wasn't going to be his.

The sanitarium looked more like a hotel than a hospital, all soft beige and hushed carpet, the kind of expensive quiet that money buys instead of comfort. I gave the front desk a story about being an extended-family visitor, Sebastian's cousin, here on behalf of the Thornes, and the ease with which they accepted it told me the family's name still opened every door here, even after thirty-one years.

They brought me to a small sitting room, and a few minutes later, an aide wheeled in an elderly woman, thin as the girl in the photographs, her dark eyes faded but unmistakably the same eyes.

"Imogen?" I said.

Her whole body went rigid at the name, like I'd struck her.

"Who sent you," she said. Not a question. A warning.

"No one sent me. I'm — I married into the family. I'm Sebastian's wife." I watched something crack open in her face at his name, grief and fury arriving at once. "I found your photographs. I found the letter. I know you were supposed to have died decades ago."

"I did die," she said quietly. "The version of me that mattered to them died the day I tried to leave."

"Leave with what? With who?"

Her hand shot out and closed around my wrist with a strength I didn't expect from someone so frail, her eyes suddenly sharp, urgent, fixed on mine like I was the only solid thing in the room.

"Did they already make you sign for the children?" she asked.

"I — there's a clause. A loyalty clause. I haven't signed it yet."

"Don't," she said. "Naomi — that's your name? Don't you dare sign that paper. Not until you understand exactly what it takes from you the moment you do."

An aide appeared in the doorway, glancing at a clock like visiting hours had rules I hadn't been told. Imogen's grip tightened one last time before they gently pried her fingers loose.

"Come back," she whispered. "There's more. And there isn't much time left for me to say it."

Continue the story Part 8: The Boy in the Photograph →

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