Chapter 9 - THE FOURTH CHILD
The room seemed to tilt.
“A son?” Emma repeated.
Celia nodded.
“Rebecca gave birth eight years after the triplets.”
I stared at the screen.
“Daniel never mentioned another child.”
“He may not know,” Celia said.
She explained that Rebecca had briefly escaped the residential program and lived under an assumed name.
During that period she formed a relationship with another survivor of the same fraudulent medical network.
He died in a traffic accident before the baby was born.
The child, Noah, had been placed with foster parents after Rebecca was returned to institutional care through a disputed court order.
“Where is he now?” Lily asked.
Celia lowered her gaze.
“He's sixteen, and I believe someone has been using his location to control her.”
Sophie was already reaching for her keys.
Marisol interrupted.
“We are not approaching a minor on the basis of a single call.”
That angered Sophie, but she listened.
Celia provided a caseworker's name and fragments of an old case number, which Marisol agreed to verify through appropriate channels.
I wondered what else could possibly be concealed in a life I had believed I understood.
Then Celia asked to speak with me privately.
My daughters reluctantly left the room.
“She watched you from a distance,” Celia told me.
“Rebecca?”
“When the girls were thirteen, she stood across from their middle school during a concert.”
I remembered that night.
I remembered the snow on the school steps and a woman who turned away before I could thank her for holding a door.
“She wanted to run to them,” Celia said.
“But someone had told her the girls would be taken from you if she did.”
I felt anger rise through my sorrow.
“Who?”
“I never saw his face.”
Before Celia could say more, a crash sounded from her end of the call.
She jerked toward the door.
“Someone is here,” she whispered.
The screen went dark.
Seconds later, a text appeared from her number.
May you like
The boy knows where the evidence is hidden.
