Chapter 17 - The Second Crib
Grace denied it before the broadcast ended.
"I did not have twins."
Her voice shook with fury rather than uncertainty.
"I would know."
Nathan believed her.
Evelyn did not allow belief to substitute for evidence.
"Where did you deliver Lily?"
"Saint Catherine's Women's Center in Ohio."
"Who was present?"
"A nurse named Beth."
"Doctor?"
Grace frowned.
"Dr. Meyers."
"Not Howard Pell?"
"No."
"Did you see Lily immediately?"
Grace's face softened despite the chaos.
"Yes."
"For how long?"
"Maybe thirty seconds."
"Then what?"
"They took her because she was small and had trouble breathing."
Nathan's attention sharpened.
"How long before they brought her back?"
Grace looked at him.
"Almost six hours."
Evelyn wrote something down.
"Were you sedated?"
"After delivery."
"How heavily?"
"I don't know."
Grace's certainty began to crack.
"They said I was hemorrhaging."
Nathan moved closer.
"Were you?"
"I thought so."
"Did anyone tell you that before you were sedated?"
Grace closed her eyes.
"No."
The room became very quiet.
Victoria had lied repeatedly.
That did not mean every document she released was false.
Sometimes the most effective weapon was a truth stolen from the victim.
Mills contacted the Ohio hospital.
Saint Catherine's had closed two years earlier after a corporate acquisition.
Its archived records belonged to Northstar Medical Consulting.
Nathan almost laughed at the cruelty of the pattern.
"Of course they do."
Evelyn obtained an emergency preservation order.
Northstar claimed a server failure had corrupted maternity files from the relevant year.
Mills requested state birth data.
Only one live birth appeared under Grace's name.
Lily Grace Miller.
No second child.
Then Marcus found a billing record.
Grace's insurance had been charged for two neonatal bassinets.
Grace stared at the line item.
"Hospitals make billing errors."
"Yes," Evelyn said.
"But there are two infant identification numbers."
Nathan felt his heartbeat in his throat.
One number matched Lily's later pediatric record.
The second terminated six hours after birth.
Status: transferred.
Not deceased.
Transferred.
Grace stood so abruptly her chair fell backward.
"Transferred where?"
No destination appeared.
Nathan caught her before she stumbled.
"Grace."
"No."
She pushed away from him.
"No, they did not take another baby from me."
Lily appeared in the doorway.
"Mommy?"
Grace turned immediately.
Her face transformed.
She wiped her eyes and crouched despite the pain in her shoulder.
"I'm okay, sweetheart."
Lily looked at the fallen chair.
"You don't look okay."
Grace smiled weakly.
"I got surprised."
Lily walked over and hugged her.
Nathan watched Grace hold their daughter and tried not to imagine another infant somewhere in the world.
He failed.
After Lily returned to the other room, Grace began reconstructing the delivery minute by minute.
She remembered arriving alone because she had moved to Ohio only two weeks earlier.
She remembered giving a false emergency contact because she feared Richard's investigators.
She remembered a nurse with strawberry-blond hair.
Beth.
She remembered a male administrator entering before the sedation.
"He said there was a problem with my insurance."
"Name?" Mills asked.
Grace shook her head.
"I don't remember."
"What did he look like?"
"Thin."
"Age?"
"Maybe forty."
"Anything distinctive?"
Grace closed her eyes.
"A burn scar on his left hand."
Edwin, listening from secure custody by video, reacted.
Nathan saw it.
"You know him."
Edwin stared at Grace.
"Victor had a security contractor named Paul Raines."
"Burn scar?"
"Yes."
"What did he do?"
Edwin's face became gray.
"Special assignments."
Nathan hated the phrase.
"Was he in Ohio when Lily was born?"
"I don't know."
"Find out."
Marcus traced Raines through old expense accounts.
A hotel receipt placed him six miles from Saint Catherine's on the night Grace delivered.
Grace began shaking.
Nathan sat beside her.
"We don't know what happened yet."
"He was there."
"Yes."
"Your father's man was there."
"Victor's man."
"Same machine."
Nathan could not argue.
Mills asked Edwin whether Richard had ever mentioned a second child.
Edwin denied it.
Then he remembered something.
"There was a payment."
"What payment?"
"After Lily was born."
"To whom?"
Edwin closed his eyes.
"I didn't understand it then."
"Edwin."
"A pediatric specialist in Montreal."
Nathan stood.
"For Lily?"
"Richard told me it was for a private dependent."
"Name?"
"Dr. Elise Fournier."
The doctor had retired but was still alive.
Mills contacted Canadian authorities.
Dr. Fournier agreed to speak by video after seeing Nathan's name.
She appeared on screen from a small home near Quebec City.
She was eighty and looked frightened before anyone asked a question.
"I wondered when the Cole family would come back."
Nathan's skin prickled.
"You treated a child connected to my father?"
Dr. Fournier nodded.
"A newborn boy."
Grace made a sound that was almost a sob.
Nathan gripped her hand.
"What was his name?"
"The documents called him Michael."
"Last name?"
"There wasn't one."
"Who brought him?"
Dr. Fournier looked down.
"A man named Paul Raines."
Grace covered her face.
Nathan fought to keep his voice level.
"What was wrong with the baby?"
"Respiratory distress."
"Was he premature?"
"Slightly."
"How long did you treat him?"
"Three weeks."
Nathan's chest tightened.
"Then what happened?"
"A woman came for him."
"Who?"
Dr. Fournier hesitated.
"Helen Mercer."
Everyone in the room went still.
Grace lowered her hands.
"Helen took my baby?"
Dr. Fournier looked confused.
"I was told his mother had died."
Grace began crying.
Nathan put one arm around her.
"Did Helen say where she was taking him?"
"No."
"Did you ever hear about him again?"
Dr. Fournier nodded slowly.
"Once."
"When?"
"His first birthday."
"From whom?"
"Richard Cole."
Nathan felt sick.
"What did he say?"
"That the boy was healthy."
Grace broke away from Nathan and walked toward the window.
"He knew."
Her voice was barely audible.
"Richard knew they took my son."
Nathan looked at Edwin on the screen.
"Did my father have another child hidden somewhere?"
Edwin shook his head in horror.
"I swear to you, I did not know."
Nathan believed him only because the man's fear looked genuine.
They spent the night tracing Helen's travel, Richard's payments, and every trust connected to unnamed dependents.
At 2:40 a.m., Maya found a recurring education payment from a Cole foundation to a private school in Massachusetts.
The beneficiary was listed as M. Bell.
The payments began when the child was four.
They continued for eleven years.
Then stopped.
Nathan did the arithmetic.
"He'd be five now."
Grace stared at him.
"Lily is four."
"Four years and ten months."
"Twins."
Nathan nodded.
The school file contained a photograph.
A little boy stood in a blue uniform beside a playground fence.
Dark hair.
Gray-blue eyes.
A familiar crease beside his mouth.
Grace made a sound so broken Nathan never forgot it.
"That's my baby."
Nathan could not speak.
The file gave the boy's name.
Michael Bell.
Guardian: Margaret Bell.
Nathan stared at the screen.
Margaret had the last tape.
Margaret knew about Caroline.
And Margaret had apparently raised Nathan and Grace's hidden son.
Grace reached for the phone.
"Call her."
Nathan did.
Margaret answered immediately.
"I knew this moment would come."
Grace took the phone from him.
Her voice shook with rage.
"Where is my son?"
Margaret began crying.
"Grace, please listen to me."
"Where is my son?"
"Safe."
"You took him."
"I saved him."
Grace screamed the next words.
"You let me believe I had only one child!"
Nathan had never heard her scream before.
Lily woke in the next room and began crying.
Nathan motioned for Evelyn to go to her.
Margaret's voice trembled through the speaker.
"Richard ordered Paul Raines to take the boy because a male descendant complicated the trust even more than Lily did."
Grace sobbed.
"So you stole him first?"
"Helen brought him to me."
"Why didn't you return him?"
Margaret was silent.
Grace's entire body shook.
"Why?"
"Because Richard threatened to kill both children if you knew there were two."
Nathan closed his eyes.
Margaret continued.
"He believed you would run harder with a son."
"I did run."
"Yes."
"For five years."
"I know."
Grace's voice became almost unrecognizable.
"You watched me raise Lily alone while my son was alive."
Margaret cried harder.
"I hated myself every day."
"Good."
Nathan stepped closer to Grace.
She did not look at him.
"Where is Michael now?" Nathan asked.
Margaret gave an address in rural Massachusetts.
"He is with people I trust."
"We're coming."
"Nathan, wait."
"No more waiting."
"Victoria knows about him now."
Nathan froze.
"How?"
"Someone accessed the school file yesterday."
"Who?"
May you like
Margaret's answer came with terrified certainty.
"Victor."
