Chapter 7 - The Address in Chicago
The rain had returned, turning the Chicago skyline into a smeared watercolor of gray concrete and blurred neon lights.
Natalie sat in her parked sedan outside a modest brick walk-up apartment building in Lincoln Park, the unsealed envelope from Judge Whitman resting on the passenger seat like a live wire. Inside was a name, a current address, a photograph, and a brief history of a young woman named Maya Vance—no, Maya Hayes—who worked as a botanical illustrator, had no idea she was a legal heir to the Brooks estate, and had spent her entire life believing she was an orphan abandoned at birth.
Natalie’s fingers hovered over the steering wheel. For three hours on the drive back from Indianapolis, she had debated what to do with the information. She could give the file to an attorney. She could hand it to a fellow journalist and let the Tribune break the human interest story of the decade.
Instead, she had driven straight to Chicago, parked outside Maya’s building, and paralyzed herself with a single, terrifying question: What right do I have to blow up her life the way my mother blew up mine?
She picked up the envelope, pulled out the photograph, and studied it under the amber glow of a streetlamp.
Maya looked nothing like Eleanor, and nothing like Daniel. But she had the same deep, thoughtful eyes that Natalie saw every morning in her own mirror—eyes that seemed to search for meaning behind every closed door.
Natalie opened her car door, stepping out into the cold drizzle. She walked up the stone steps of the apartment building, found the tenant directory, and located Apartment 3B.
She didn't press the buzzer. She stood in the covered entryway, sheltering from the rain, listening to the muffled sounds of music and life filtering through the old wooden doors.
Then, the inner door clicked open, and a young woman carrying a canvas grocery tote stepped out into the lobby. She wore an oversized cable-knit sweater, her dark hair pulled back in a loose clip, a smudge of green watercolor paint staining her left thumb.
It was Maya.
Natalie froze. The words she had rehearsed in her head for the past three hours—professional, detached, careful—completely vanished.
Maya stopped in her tracks, noticing Natalie standing near the mailboxes. She hesitated, shifting her grocery bag. “Can I help you?”
“I’m sorry,” Natalie said, her voice catching slightly before she steadied it. “I know this is completely uninvited. But... my name is Natalie Brooks.”
Maya’s expression didn't change with recognition; it shifted into polite confusion. “Okay? Do I know you?”
“No,” Natalie said, stepping closer, holding the manila envelope against her chest. “You don't. But I think... I think we share a grandfather.”
Maya stared at her, the canvas bag slipping an inch down her arm. The lobby suddenly felt impossibly quiet, save for the hum of the old radiator against the wall.
“My grandfather was Richard Brooks,” Natalie said softly, the words tasting strange and heavy on her tongue. “And twenty-five years ago, my family made sure the law forgot you existed. I’m here because I want to help you find out why.”
Maya didn't scream, and she didn't slam the door. She simply set her groceries down on the small wooden bench by the entrance, her eyes locking onto Natalie’s with an intensity that made Natalie’s breath catch.
“I’ve known I was adopted since I was six years old,” Maya said, her voice dangerously calm, though her hands were trembling slightly. “And for the last ten years, every time I tried to look into my biological records, the state files were sealed so tight not even a freedom-of-information request could crack them. How did you find me?”
“Because my mother was the one who sealed them,” Natalie said, holding out the envelope. “And she’s not the only one who kept the secret.”
Before Maya could reach out to take the file, the front glass door of the building swung open, letting in a gust of cold wind.
A man in a dark trench coat stepped into the lobby, shaking the rain from his umbrella. He looked at Natalie, then at Maya, and paused.
Natalie’s blood ran cold. She recognized the sharp, angular jaw and the silver-rimmed glasses immediately. It wasn't an assassin, and it wasn't a random stranger.
May you like
It was Arthur Vance’s junior partner—the lawyer who had been quietly managing the estate records in Indianapolis while Vance was aging out of practice. And he was holding an exact duplicate of the file Natalie had just placed on the bench.
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