Free Raven by Suzy Turner Page B

hand
and led me into the living room where we all sat in silence before
Gabriel produced an old battered shoe box and took off the lid. In
it were photos and letters. He handed me a picture of a very
beautiful young woman with long black hair. There was something
vaguely familiar about her. In her arms was a tiny newborn baby.
Clearly the photo had been taken in a hospital immediately after
the baby had been born.
    “ Who
is this?” I asked.
    “ Her
name was Serena,” answered Meredith with a sad smile, “Lilly. This
is your mother.”
    I gasped
and shook my head.
    “ No,
my mother is Vivian. This isn't Vivian.”
    “ No,
Lilly. Vivian isn't your mother. Serena is. And this little child
is your sister, Neleh,” said Gabriel as he passed a number of
different photos to me. All were the same little girl at different
ages. One was the photo Ben had taken to the airport to identify me
with. Gabriel told me it was the closest image he had of me. “You
two looked so alike when you were babies.”
    In
another the little girl was about four and was being cuddled by my
father on a beach on a lovely sunny day. He looked like a
completely different person, so happy. I had never seen him happy
before. Another pictured her aged around 10, posing happily for the
camera in this very living room with Gabriel laughing to her side.
The most poignant image was that of her as a teenager pictured with
Serena and my father. The image of a very happy family – it was
then that I noticed Serena was pregnant.”
    Wyatt
spoke. “She was carrying you in this picture, Lilly.”
    I shook
my head but deep down I knew. It was obvious to see. I looked very
much like Neleh and Serena. And as I looked at the photos, I
realised that Serena was the woman from my dream. I didn't know
what to think. For so many years I had grown up believing Vivian
was my mother yet I had never felt any kind of bond with her. She
had always made it blatantly obvious that she didn't care for me.
It made sense. I felt my eyes welling up so I blinked hard to try
and get rid of the tears before they spilled down my
face.
    “ Lilly,” said Gabriel, “this is just the beginning. There
are things we need to tell you that you are going to find hard to
believe.”
    I
nodded, unable to say a word.
    “ Just
after you were born, Neleh was killed,” said Wyatt.
    I gasped
and gulped back the tears as it hit me that I'd once had a sister,
but now she was dead.
    “ And
shortly afterwards... Serena died too. I'm so sorry, Lilly,” he
said sadly.
    “ What?
But how? Why?” I cried, looking down at the picture of the happy
family, ripped apart by two deaths.
    “ Nobody knows exactly what happened, dear. All we know is
that Neleh was murdered in the forest. By who or what we don't know
for sure – although there were suspicions at the time,” said
Meredith as she held my hand tightly in hers.
    “ Suspicions?” I asked.
    Gabriel
looked so angry, but before he could speak, he was interrupted by
Wyatt, “Lilly there is a man in that forest who is believed to have
been responsible for Neleh's death. His name is Sammy
Morton.”
    Gabriel
gave me another photo showing Neleh probably a couple of years
older than me, pictured with a handsome young man with olive skin
and black hair and even darker eyes. They looked so happy
together.
    “ Is
that him?” I asked.
    Meredith
nodded.
    “ But
they looked so happy. Why would he kill her? I don't
understand.”
    “ Nobody understands. But he hasn't been seen since. There
was a lot of talk. But we can't be sure,” added
Meredith.
    The
angry look on Gabriel's face suggested he thought Sammy was
guilty.
    “ But
what about Serena? What about my mother?” I asked.
    “ Your
mother killed herself, Lilly,” said Wyatt, quietly.
    “ How
could she do that? How could she just leave me, her baby. Her own
daughter?” I cried.
    “ Again, Lilly dear, we do not understand that either. Grief
is a funny thing. People react to it in such unusual