CHAPTER 172: CHAPTER 172: I RECOGNIZED MY SISTER AT A GLANCE

Justin Holden looked at her lowered profile and tightly pursed lips, patiently waiting.

After about ten seconds, Jean Ellison finally raised her head, meeting his gaze with a calm look, her tone unwavering.

"Yes, we’ve only known each other for half a year."

"Why is Lawyer Holden asking such questions? Don’t you know when we met?"

She questioned him.

Justin Holden leaned slightly forward, his elbows resting on the table, staring into her eyes.

"Tell me the truth, did we know each other before? Who are you really?"

Jean tightened her grip on the spoon, her knuckles turning slightly white.

She was silent for two seconds before speaking, her voice cold.

"Yes, we knew each other before."

Her change of statement surprised Justin Holden a bit, he didn’t expect her to admit so quickly.

He interrupted any possible continuation from her, his tone icy.

"You really change fast, admitting so soon. Are you Claire Caldwell?"

He directly threw out a name he had long suspected.

Jean’s heart clenched suddenly, her heartbeat raced.

But there was no change on her face, instead, she showed a well-timed hint of confusion, then shook her head, her tone firm.

"No, I am not Claire Caldwell."

She looked at Justin, her eyes even carrying a trace of helplessness at being mistaken by him.

"But we did meet before, my name is Jamie York, ’Yu’ as in ’remaining’, ’Jin’ as in ’brocade’."

Justin Holden furrowed his brow, searching his memory for the name "Jamie York" and a related face.

Jean didn’t give him much time to think, continuing with a steady pace.

"You personally sent my father to prison before, about eight years ago. He committed a hit-and-run while drunk, killing someone. Although he was already old, you still took him to court, and he was sentenced to over twenty years."

She paused, her voice slightly lower.

"He died of illness in prison before he could get out. At that time, I was just in junior high, you might have seen me outside the courthouse or somewhere else."

She raised her eyes, looking directly at Justin Holden.

"Ronan Sutton harbors malice against you entirely because of this, he knows about it."

Ronan Sutton widened his eyes; he didn’t understand why Claire Caldwell was saying these things, as if she were making up a story.

However, he didn’t make a sound, nor did he deny it.

He wanted to see what else Claire Caldwell was going to say.

Justin Holden leaned back in his chair, his mind quickly searching.

Eight years ago, he indeed independently handled a few criminal cases, one of which was a hit-and-run resulting in death.

The defendant seemed to be a middle-aged man surnamed Yu, from a poor family, who killed the only son of a wealthy local family with a significant background.

There was substantial public pressure at the time, with the victim’s family demanding a heavy sentence.

As a legal advisor on the prosecution side, he provided professional legal opinions.

The final verdict was a heavy penalty, but considering the defendant’s age and that it wasn’t intentional murder, he was not sentenced to death.

This was the result after considering various factors within the legal framework.

He remembered that the defendant seemed very old during the trial, his mental state not good.

He indeed had a daughter, quite young—wasn’t she called Jamie York?

It seemed she attended the trial once or twice, always with her head down, sitting quietly in a corner.

The impression was very vague.

Turns out that person had already died of illness in prison.

And Jean Ellison, is his daughter.

He had been unable to ascertain Jean’s background before imprisonment, her household registry showed she was from a remote area with poor file management.

If she were really that Jamie York, all of this would seem to make sense.

She changed her name, distancing herself from the past.

Justin Holden’s brow gradually smoothed out, but the scrutiny in his eyes didn’t completely fade.

He looked at Jean, her expression very calm.

"So that’s how it is." He slowly spoke, his voice softer than before, "I’m sorry about your father. That was my job."

Jean shook her head, her mouth forming a very faint curve.

"There’s nothing to apologize for. It was my father’s fault, he drank and shouldn’t have driven, let alone hit someone and run. He should take responsibility."

Having said that, she picked up the empty bowl and spoon in front of her and stood up.

"Please enjoy your wontons, Lawyer Holden. I’ll go tidy up the kitchen."

She turned, her steps steady as she walked into the kitchen, placing the bowl and utensils into the sink.

Once her back was to the dining room, confirming Justin Holden couldn’t see her expression, she took a long deep breath, the tension in her back slightly relaxing.

Thankfully.

She reacted quickly, smoothed it over in time.

Jamie York was a real person.

Back when she was released from prison, Isabel Dalton helped her forge a new identity, using this Jamie York’s identity details and hard-to-verify remote area household registry.

The real Jamie York, that outstanding girl, had been adopted by a well-to-do family in a distant place many years ago, even changing her name, almost severing ties with the past.

Isabel Dalton took advantage of this, and the flaws in mountainous area’s household registry management, to create this near-perfect clean background for her.

The experience she described earlier about her father’s hit-and-run, imprisonment, and death from illness was also a true event in Jamie York’s life, only slightly blurred in time details.

She knew Justin Holden, as a lawyer, was meticulous and skeptical; a completely fabricated story would be hard to convince him.

Only such a half-true, half-false lie, grafted onto a real person and event, would be most persuasive.

Justin Holden sat in the dining room, watching Jean disappear at the kitchen door, his gaze deep.

Jean’s explanation, logically, seemed to make sense.

Her background, her vague aloofness and resistance toward him, Ronan Sutton’s apparent hostility toward him, all seemed to be explainable.

A girl who lost her father because of his job, having complex feelings toward him, was normal.

However... he felt something was off.

But, currently he had no evidence to refute her statement.

"Jamie York..."

He silently recited the name in his mind, his eyes dark and unclear.

In the kitchen, Jean turned on the faucet, the cold water washing over the dishes, her fingers touching the icy stream, her heart finally calming down a bit.

She knew Justin Holden wouldn’t easily fully believe.

But at least for now, she used this identity to deflect, without exposing herself as Claire Caldwell.

She must be more careful, Justin Holden was too perceptive.

She turned off the faucet, wiping her hands dry with a clean cloth. Her face had returned to its usual cool and calm demeanor.

She walked out of the kitchen and saw Justin Holden still sitting by the dining table, the bowl of wontons in front of him barely touched.

"Lawyer Holden, is it not to your taste?" she asked in a normal tone.

Justin Holden looked up at her, his gaze lingering on her face for a few seconds before he spoke lightly: "No, just don’t have much of an appetite."

He stood up: "Thank you for the wontons. I should be going."

He walked toward the door.

Jean watched his tall figure, not voicing any attempt to keep him.

Walking to the door, Justin Holden’s hand grasped the doorknob, his steps came to a halt, yet he didn’t open the door immediately.

He had his back to her and suddenly asked, in an even voice.

"Jamie York."

Jean Ellison’s heart skipped a beat, but her voice remained steady.

"Hmm?"

Justin Holden did not turn around; he just tilted his face slightly, the lines cold and hard.

"Do you hate me because of your father?"

Jean Ellison was silent for a moment.

This was a question she needed to answer cautiously.

"I don’t hate you." She finally said, her voice clear, "The law is just. He did something wrong and deserved to be punished. I just need time to accept this fact."

Justin Holden listening, said nothing further.

He twisted the doorknob, opened the door, and walked out.

The door gently closed behind him.

Jean Ellison stood in place, listening to the footsteps outside gradually fade away until they disappeared completely.

She slowly walked to the sofa and sat down, feeling as if all strength had been drained from her body.

Ronan Sutton waited until Justin Holden left, then approached her, frowning slightly.

"How could he not recognize you?"

Jean Ellison bit her lip and said.

"I’ve lost a lot of weight. His impression of me is still from five years ago. The day before I went to prison, we saw each other in court."

"I was over one hundred and sixty pounds back then."

"We reunited six months ago. When he saw me, he didn’t recognize me."

Ronan Sutton stared at her face. She had indeed changed a lot, but her eyes remained the same, "But I recognized you at a glance, sister."

Jean Ellison’s heart tightened, meeting his gaze.

Ronan Sutton smiled and continued, "Maybe it’s because I’m younger, so I have better eyesight, unlike Justin Holden, almost thirty, getting on in years."

Jean Ellison coughed lightly, hearing footsteps outside. Aunt Mason and Jesse were back.

"Rest early."

She told Ronan Sutton as she walked toward the door.

Justin Holden returned to his apartment, closed the door, and silence filled the room.

He didn’t turn on the main light, only lit a desk lamp.

The dim yellow light outlined the contour of his stern profile.

He walked to the desk and turned on his laptop.

The screen’s white glow reflected in his deep-set eyes.

He logged into a database that required special permissions, input the key, and began retrieving the electronic files of a hit-and-run case from eight years ago.

As the files loaded, the screen was filled with dense text and scanned documents.

He scrolled the mouse, his gaze quickly scanning lines of case summaries, indictments, trial records, witness testimonies, finally pausing on the judgment and enforcement status.

The defendant was Sean York, male, sixty-two years old at the time, charged with hit-and-run traffic accident causing death.

Sentenced to twenty-two years in prison, and in the second year of serving the sentence, died of a sudden heart attack in the prison hospital.

The file contained little information about Sean York’s family situation, only briefly mentioned "has a stepdaughter, about sixteen at the time."

No name, no photo, as if merely a vague background figure.

Justin Holden frowned slightly and continued sifting through the attachments.

Most were site photos, vehicle appraisal reports, medical certificates, and other physical evidence materials.

In the last batch of miscellaneous files, he found a casually angled photo of the scene’s perimeter, seemingly taken not long after the incident near Sean York’s home.

The photo’s background was chaotic, with a few conversing police officers and onlookers being the main subjects.

At the edge of the photo, a small, slender figure caught Justin Holden’s attention.

It was the back of a girl.

Wearing faded old clothes, her top was noticeably short, tightly stretched across her body, with sleeves that were too short, revealing slender wrists.

Her pants were also somewhat ill-fitting, and the oversized canvas shoes on her feet, whose original color couldn’t be discerned, looked too large and empty.

Her whole appearance seemed frail, with sallow hair, slightly hunched back, exuding a weakness from chronic malnutrition.

This silhouette’s frame did indeed resemble the current Jean Ellison’s to some extent.

If this was indeed the same person, having undergone years of growth and life improvement, the change in physique would be logically sound.

Justin Holden’s mouse lingered on that blurred silhouette.

But Jean Ellison’s earlier words echoed in his mind, and doubts began to surface.

As far as he knew later, and information subtly revealed in the files, this Sean York was not Jamie York’s biological father, but her stepfather.

Moreover, Sean York was an alcoholic, irritable, and not kind to his stepdaughter, possibly even abusive.

Sporadic neighborhood testimonies corroborated this indirectly.

If true, Jamie York shouldn’t feel any deep affection for the stepfather who sent her to prison; more likely, she felt fear, disgust, even hatred.

In that case, as the one who put Sean York in prison, rescuing her in a sense, Jamie York should feel at least some gratitude towards him, Justin Holden, rather than such apparent resistance, let alone stimulating such great animosity in Ronan Sutton towards him.

This didn’t make sense.

And then there’s Ronan Sutton.

The Sutton family’s second young master, with a privileged background and social circle starkly different from Jamie York’s underprivileged past.

Their life paths almost incapable of intersecting.

Justin Holden’s fingers lightly tapped on the desk, his eyes growing darker.

Jamie York’s identity seemed reasonable, but upon deeper scrutiny, was hard to fully trust.

How could Jamie York’s mother and Susan Kingston be long-time friends, two people with no apparent intersection?

What if Jean Ellison wasn’t Jamie York?

If she was Claire Caldwell?

Once this hypothesis established, everything made reasonable sense.

Only if she were Claire, Ronan Sutton could naturally call her ’sister’ with confidence.

The Sutton and Caldwell families were close acquaintances, closely connected, Ronan Sutton knew Claire Caldwell from childhood and called her sister as a matter of course.

And Susan Kingston, Aunt Mason, Philip Paxton, these seemingly scattered individuals, would surround her so closely.

Because these people were originally entwined with Claire Caldwell’s fate.

Justin Holden leaned back into the chair abruptly, the computer screen’s light flickering in his eyes.

If Jean Ellison was indeed Claire Caldwell...

Then what was the reason for her to forge an identity and hide her past?

Was it to evade old enemies, investigate the Caldwell family’s case?

Or was it to secretly investigate the Caldwell family’s bankruptcy and her father’s death, or was it to avoid him?

Why avoid him? Was it because she resented him? She seemed to have deep-seated resentment towards him.

If she was not Claire Caldwell, then was her approach to him coincidental, or deliberate?

He looked at the screen’s image of the small, ill-fittingly dressed girl’s silhouette and recalled Jean Ellison’s now cool and beautiful face, unable to reconcile the two silhouettes no matter what.

"Book a plane ticket for me, for tomorrow morning."

He made the call, incidentally replying to a message from home.

"Alright."