The entry was dated three years ago.
I flipped through more pages, each one a letter to this phantom daughter. Some were hopeful, some angry, some desperate. The most recent, dated just two weeks ago, sent chills down my spine.
My miracle girl, they’ve all finally accepted your coming. The donations are flowing in. Soon we’ll have everything we need to bring you home properly. Just a little longer now, and no one will be able to take you away from me again. Forever yours, Mommy.
What had happened three years ago? Colette and Alaric had only been married for a few months then. Had there been a pregnancy no one knew about? A loss?
My phone buzzed with a text from Colette: Saw you driving away. Did you find your shawl?
I froze, unsure how to respond. Before I could decide, another text came through: Sarah, I need to tell you something. Something I haven’t told anyone else. Can we meet tomorrow? Somewhere private. I’ve been keeping a secret for too long, and you’re the only one I trust with the truth.
I stared at the screen, a mixture of dread and vindication washing over me. Whatever was happening with Colette, I was about to find out. With trembling fingers, I replied: Of course. Name the time and place.
Her response came immediately: The cabin at Lake Morrison. Noon. Come alone.
The cabin. Her family’s summer place, isolated and private. The perfect spot for a confession—or a confrontation.
I started the car again, Colette’s journal secure in my purse, and drove home with the weight of twenty years of friendship pressing down on me.
By the time I pulled into our driveway, I had made up my mind. I would meet Colette tomorrow, hear her out, and then decide what to do. Bennett was waiting for me in the kitchen, still in his scrubs from his hospital shift. One look at my face told him everything.
“You found something,” he said. It wasn’t a question.
“A lot of somethings.” I sank into a chair at our kitchen table. “And tomorrow, I’m going to find out the rest.”
I showed him the journal, watched his expression darken as he read. When he finished, he closed it carefully and set it down between us like a bomb that might detonate.
“Whatever you’re walking into tomorrow,” he said quietly, “be careful.”
“If she’s been living this delusion for three years, she’s still Colette,” I insisted, though I wasn’t sure anymore what that meant. “She’s still my friend.”
Bennett reached across the table and took my hand. “People who are drowning will pull down anyone trying to save them,” he said. “Remember that.”
That night, I left Bennett a voicemail before falling into a troubled sleep: “I think you’re right about everything. I’m scared of what I’ll find out tomorrow.”
In my dreams, I stood in Colette’s perfect nursery, watching as she rocked an empty blanket, singing lullabies to no one at all.
The drive to Lake Morrison took forty minutes, each mile heightening my anxiety. I’d barely slept, turning over possibilities in my mind until dawn broke. Bennett had offered to come with me, but this was something I needed to face alone, whatever this turned out to be.
The lake was peaceful in the late spring sunshine, its surface rippling with gentle waves. The Whitman family cabin sat nestled among tall pines on the eastern shore, its weathered wood and stone chimney a fixture of my childhood memories. Colette and I had spent countless summer days here, swimming, gossiping, dreaming of our futures.
As I pulled up the gravel driveway, I spotted Colette’s white SUV parked under the carport. My stomach clenched. There was no turning back now.
I approached the cabin slowly, taking in details I’d missed on previous visits. The porch swing where we’d shared secrets now looked abandoned, its chains rusted. Flower pots sat empty. The welcome mat was faded beyond recognition.
Before I could knock, the door swung open. Colette stood there, dressed in a simple white sundress. No baby bump, no pregnancy glow—just Colette, her face bare of makeup, her blue eyes rimmed with red.
“You knew,” she said simply. Not a question.
I nodded, unable to find words.
She stepped back, gesturing me inside. “I should have realized Bennett would figure it out. Doctors notice things.”
The cabin’s interior was dim, shafts of sunlight cutting through half-closed blinds. Colette moved to the worn leather couch and sat, curling her legs beneath her like she used to do in college.
“Do you hate me?” she asked, her voice small.
I remained standing, unsure of the script for this moment. “I don’t hate you. I just… I don’t understand.”
She laughed, a brittle sound. “That makes two of us.”
I watched as she poured water from a pitcher on the coffee table, her hands steady. “No wine today. No performance.”
“I wasn’t always lying,” she began, staring into her glass. “A year ago, I was pregnant, for real.”
My breath caught. “What?”
“Eight weeks. We hadn’t told anyone yet. We were waiting for the first trimester to pass.” Her voice was flat, emotionless. “I miscarried on a Tuesday. Alaric was in London for work. I was alone.”
“Colette.” I moved toward her, instinct overriding caution. “Why didn’t you call me?”
“Because you had just announced your promotion at the counseling center. Everyone was so proud of you.” She shrugged. “I didn’t want to steal your moment.”
The familiar guilt twisted in my gut, the constant push-pull of our friendship, where her needs and mine perpetually competed for oxygen.
“After the miscarriage, I fell apart,” she continued. “But secretly. No one knew except Alaric and my doctor.”
I sat beside her, leaving space between us. “And then?”
“And then I stopped accepting it. I started talking to the baby like she was still there, buying things, planning.” Colette’s hands fluttered to her still-flat stomach. “Alaric was worried, but he went along with it at first. He thought it was grief.”
“When did it become… this?” I gestured vaguely at her, at the situation we were now in.
She sighed. “Three months ago. I was supposed to speak at a maternal health fundraiser for my nonprofit, you know? But I had a panic attack before going on stage. Couldn’t breathe, couldn’t think.”
“I remember. You said you had food poisoning.”
“Another lie.” She smiled sadly. “Alaric found me hyperventilating in the bathroom. I kept saying I couldn’t face them, couldn’t tell them I’d failed. And then he said, ‘What if you didn’t have to?’”
My blood ran cold. “He suggested you fake the pregnancy?”
“Not exactly. He suggested I could say I was newly pregnant, just to get through the event. We’d announce a loss later, after I’d had time to process privately.” Colette’s eyes met mine, hollow. “But it felt so good, Sarah. The congratulations. The attention. The way people looked at me, like I was special again.”
“So you kept going.”
“It snowballed. One event became another. A small bump became a bigger one. And then the donations started coming in.”
I frowned. “Donations?”
Colette stood abruptly, moving to a desk in the corner. She returned with a folder full of papers. “Here,” she said, spreading them on the coffee table. “See for yourself.”
The documents showed donations—substantial ones—from various businesses and individuals, all to Colette’s nonprofit, New Beginnings Maternal Care.
“The foundation is real,” she explained. “The work we do is real. We provide prenatal care to women in underserved communities.”
“What isn’t real is…” I trailed off.
“You,” I finished. “Your pregnancy.”
She nodded, eyes downcast. “I don’t understand. Why would your pregnancy affect donations to your nonprofit?”
“Because of who the donors are.” Colette shuffled through the papers, pulling out several checks with familiar names. “The Graves Foundation. The Williams Trust. Hampton Healthcare Services. They all have one thing in common.”
I scanned the names, recognition dawning. “They all lost children, or grandchildren, or siblings. They donate to maternal healthcare because of personal tragedy.”
Colette’s voice hardened slightly. “And they connect with me because they think I understand their fear. The fear of losing a child.”
The calculation of it all stunned me. “So the baby shower was a fundraiser, essentially. Every gift, every decoration—all donated by companies that support New Beginnings. They get tax write-offs and publicity. You get supplies for your clinics.”
My mind raced to process this information. It was manipulative, certainly. Deceptive, absolutely. But criminal? I wasn’t sure.
“Colette, this is—”
My phone buzzed in my pocket. A text from Bennett: The obstetrician just emailed me. He says he filed a fraud report.
My heart sank. I looked up at Colette, who was watching me intently.
“Bad news?” she asked.
I hesitated, then turned my phone screen toward her. She read the message, her face draining of color.
“Who else knows?” I asked quietly.
“Just Alaric. And Mirade. She figured it out last month.”
Colette’s composure cracked. “Sarah, I can’t go to jail. The foundation will collapse. All those women we help—they’ll have nothing.”
“You should have thought of that before you started this… this performance.”
“I know.” Tears spilled down her cheeks. “I know it was wrong, but I’ll make it right. Once the final donation from Graves clears—it’s for a new ultrasound machine for a mobile unit—I’ll announce that I lost the baby. There’ll be sympathy, not suspicion. No one will question it.”
The coldness of her planning chilled me. This wasn’t grief or delusion speaking. This was calculation.
“And what about all the people who care about you? Who’ve been worried about you? Shopping for you, planning for you. What about their feelings?”
“They’ll recover,” she said dismissively. “People always do.”
“I’m not sure I will,” I admitted.
Something shifted in Colette’s expression, a flash of the girl I’d grown up with, vulnerable and real. “I need you, Sarah. You’re the only person who won’t abandon me over this. The only one who’ll understand.”
The weight of twenty years of friendship pressed down on me: the sleepovers, the graduations, the weddings. The secrets shared and promises made. The times she’d been there for me—and the times she hadn’t.
“I’ll think about it,” I said finally, gathering my purse. “But Colette, this has to stop. Today.”
She nodded, desperation in her eyes. “Anything you want, just don’t tell anyone else. Please.”
As I drove away, the cabin growing smaller in my rearview mirror, I felt hollow. The Colette I thought I knew had disappeared, replaced by someone I barely recognized.
On the highway, my phone rang through the car speakers.
“Bennett, you were right,” I said before he could speak. “About everything.”
“Are you okay?” His concern warmed the chill that had settled in my chest.
“No,” I admitted. “I’m really not.”
“Come home,” he said softly. “We’ll figure this out together.”
But as I drove, a nagging question persisted, something about the donation from Graves that Colette had mentioned. The name was familiar beyond just seeing it on the donor list. I took the next exit and pulled into a coffee shop parking lot, searching my phone contacts.
There it was: Penelope Graves, the stern widow I’d met at a charity gala last year. She’d taken an interest in my counseling work with grieving parents. Before I could second-guess myself, I dialed her number.
“Mrs. Graves, this is Sarah Walker. We met at the Bright Futures gala.”
I swallowed hard. “I was wondering if I could ask you about a donation you made to New Beginnings Maternal Care.”
Thirty minutes later, I sat stunned in my car, Mrs. Graves’ words echoing in my ears: “Colette promised the baby would be named after my late husband—Edward for a boy, Edwina for a girl. She said it would be a living memorial to him, since the baby’s father, Alaric, had agreed to it.”
This wasn’t just faking a pregnancy. It wasn’t just misleading donors. It was strategic emotional manipulation of grieving families. And suddenly, I knew I couldn’t protect Colette anymore.
The post appeared on a local community forum three days later: Fraud alert. Local nonprofit director faking pregnancy to secure donations.
I didn’t write it. Neither did Bennett. But the damage was done. Within hours, the story spread through our small town like wildfire. Screenshots of the post circulated on social media. Local news picked it up. Colette’s phone went straight to voicemail. Alaric deleted his accounts.
Bennett was called in to speak with the hospital administration, as was Dr. Harmon, the obstetrician who’d been at the baby shower. Both were asked to provide statements about what they’d observed.
“I didn’t say anything specific,” Bennett assured me that evening, loosening his tie as he collapsed onto our couch. “Just confirmed that, as a medical professional, I had concerns about the authenticity of her condition.”
“This is a nightmare,” I murmured, scrolling through the endless comments online. People we’d known for years were expressing shock, disgust, anger. Some defended Colette, suggesting mental illness. Others called for criminal charges.
“How did this get out?” Bennett asked. “You didn’t tell anyone but me, right?”
“And Mrs. Graves,” I admitted, “but she wouldn’t have posted this. She was horrified, embarrassed.”
“Someone else at the shower must have had suspicions,” he said, “or maybe it was Mirade.”
Whoever it was, the result was the same. Colette’s carefully constructed world was imploding, and I was watching it happen from a distance.
The letter arrived the next day, hand-delivered to our mailbox. I recognized Colette’s elegant handwriting immediately.
Sarah, I know what you did. I trusted you with my truth, and you betrayed me, just like everyone else eventually does. Don’t bother denying it. You were always jealous of my life, my marriage, my success. You pretend to be supportive, but deep down, you’ve been waiting for me to fail. Well, congratulations. You’ve destroyed everything I built. I hope you’re satisfied. —Colette
No apology, no acknowledgment of her deception—just blame, shifted squarely onto my shoulders. I crumpled the letter, a memory surfacing from our junior year of high school: Colette, fainting dramatically in the cafeteria after her boyfriend broke up with her. The ensuing chaos, the ambulance called, the week of concerned attention that followed. And later, her confession to me: “I just needed everyone to see how much he hurt me.”
I’d excused it then. I’d excused so many things over the years: the borrowed clothes never returned, the boyfriend she’d flirted with, the plans canceled when better options came along. Always with that same charming smile that made it impossible to stay angry.
The doorbell rang, startling me from my thoughts. Sierra stood on our porch, her artistic bohemian style replaced by jeans and a simple T-shirt. She looked exhausted.
“Can I come in?” she asked, her voice small.
I nodded, leading her to the kitchen, where I poured us both coffee.
“I feel like such an idiot,” she said after a long silence. “I lent her $3,000.”
My head snapped up. “What?”
Sierra nodded, shame coloring her cheeks. “For the nursery. She said it was temporary, that a big design commission was coming through, but she needed to pay the contractor right away to secure the slot.”
“Oh, Sierra.”
“I know, I know,” she said, “but she’s always paid me back before. And she was so excited about making everything perfect for the baby.”
Sierra’s eyes filled with tears. “There is no baby, is there?”
“No,” I confirmed gently. “There isn’t.”
“Was there ever?”
“A year ago. She miscarried early.”
Sierra absorbed this, nodding slowly. “That makes more sense than whatever this is. Did she approach anyone else for money? Opal, maybe? They had lunch a few weeks ago. Colette was pretty focused on her afterward.”