Chapter 2 - THE THIRD CRIB
The private investigator tried to grab the hospital record from my hands.
I caught his wrist before he reached it.
“Where is my daughter?”
Daniel Mercer stared at me across the open safe. His office smelled of stale coffee and furniture polish. A framed photograph of his wife and two teenage sons sat on the desk, making the whole situation feel even more obscene.
“Rowan,” he said carefully, “you need to understand what you're looking at.”
“I understand that my ex-wife gave birth to three children. I saw two of them today. Where's the third?”
His eyes moved toward the office door.
That was when I noticed his hands were shaking.
Daniel Mercer had investigated corporate theft, political scandals, and divorces involving men worth ten times what I was worth. He had never struck me as someone easily frightened.
Now he looked like a man waiting for a sentence to be carried out.
“Sit down,” he whispered.
I didn't move.
He pointed toward the photograph on his desk.
“My youngest boy graduates next spring.”
“Then stop wasting time that belongs to my daughter.”
Something changed in his expression.
He opened a drawer and removed a small silver key.
“There was another envelope,” he said. “The one in the safe wasn't supposed to survive.”
He unlocked a narrow compartment beneath his desk.
Inside lay a folded hospital blanket, a photograph, and a yellowing visitor's pass.
I recognized the blanket immediately.
Maren had bought three of them when we first started trying for a baby. White cotton with tiny blue stars.
She used to joke that she wanted a whole house full of children, because she'd grown up in a house that was always too quiet.
I had laughed and told her we'd start with one.
Now I was looking at a blanket that had belonged to a baby I never knew existed.
Daniel slid the photograph toward me.
Three newborns lay side by side in a hospital nursery.
Two wore blue identification bands.
The third wore pink.
My knees nearly gave out.
On the back, someone had written:
Whitlock triplets. Born February 18. 4:12 a.m., 4:16 a.m., 4:21 a.m.
The babies were eight months old.
Eight months of first mornings, tiny fingers, sleepless nights.
Eight months I had spent planning a wedding with Tessa Whitmore.
“Who took her?” I asked.
Daniel looked down.
“Your daughter was transferred out of the hospital four days after she was born.”
“Transferred where?”
“To a private pediatric facility.”
“Which one?”
He swallowed.
“Willow Creek Children's Residence.”
I had never heard the name.
“Why?”
“Medical complications. That's what the paperwork said.”
“And what did the real paperwork say?”
Daniel didn't answer.
I picked up the visitor's pass.
The printed name made my stomach twist.
TESSA WHITMORE.
Authorized family representative.
I read it twice.
Then a third time.
“She was there?”
Daniel nodded.
“She arranged the transfer.”
I gripped the edge of his desk.
Tessa and I had been dating for only three months when the twins were born. She told everyone we'd met after my marriage was effectively over.
I had believed that story because I wanted to.
“Why would she have access to my child?”
Daniel's face drained of color.
“Because somebody had already given her legal authority.”
“Who?”
He hesitated.
I slammed the photograph onto the desk.
“WHO?”
“Your father.”
The room went silent.
My father, Charles Whitlock, had died six months earlier.
He'd suffered a massive stroke at our family's vacation home, and I had buried him beneath the old oak trees at St. Andrew's Cemetery.
He had been the man who taught me how to ride a bicycle, how to negotiate a business deal, and how to recognize dishonesty in another man's eyes.
He had also been the first person to tell me Maren was cheating.
I remembered that conversation so clearly it hurt.
Son, sometimes loving someone means accepting what they've become.
I had cried that night.
My father had put a hand on my shoulder.
And I had mistaken his certainty for wisdom.
“Show me the authorization,” I said.
Daniel opened the original investigative file.
The first document was a bank transfer supposedly proving Maren had been paying a lover.
Underneath was the actual transaction record.
The account belonged to a shell company controlled by Whitmore Holdings.
Tessa's family business.
The hotel photographs were worse.
The man pictured entering Maren's hotel room was a medical specialist hired to evaluate her pregnancy complications.
The camera timestamps had been altered.
And the original photographs showed him arriving with two nurses.
I sat down.
Maren hadn't cheated.
Not once.
She'd been pregnant with my children while I accused her of sleeping with another man.
She had stood in our kitchen begging me to believe her, one hand pressed protectively against her stomach.
And I had told her to leave.
I remembered her final words.
One day, Rowan, you're going to understand what you did. I hope it doesn't destroy you.
Daniel leaned against the filing cabinet.
“I was hired to manufacture a case against her. I told myself it was a wealthy family's ugly divorce. I didn't know about the babies until later.”
“You took my money.”
“Yes.”
“You destroyed my marriage.”
“Yes.”
“And when you found out about the children?”
His voice broke.
“I kept taking their money.”
I wanted to hit him.
Instead, I looked at the photograph.
Three sleeping babies.
A family of five.
A life that had existed for less than five days before somebody tore it apart.
“Why did my father do this?”
Daniel slowly opened another folder.
Inside was a copy of an agreement between Whitlock Industries and Whitmore Holdings.
A merger agreement.
My marriage to Tessa wasn't legally required to complete it, but several major investment commitments depended on the two families remaining united.
My father had been drowning in debt.
He had concealed losses of nearly eighty million dollars.
Tessa's father, Graham Whitmore, had offered a rescue.
There was one condition.
I had to leave Maren.
I stared at the agreement.
“Why not just tell me the company was in trouble?”
“Because you would have sold your shares before you abandoned your wife. Your father knew that.”
He was right.
I would have given up every dollar I owned to keep Maren.
At least, that was what I believed about myself.
The truth was that I hadn't even given her the courtesy of listening.
“Where's Willow Creek?” I asked.
Daniel gave me an address outside Asheville, North Carolina.
Then he said something that made me stop.
“Rowan, the residence closed three months ago.”
I stared at him.
“What happened to the children?”
“Most were transferred.”
“Most?”
He picked up another photograph.
A little girl sat in a pale wooden crib, wearing a pink knitted cap.
Around her tiny wrist was a delicate bracelet with a silver butterfly.
“Your daughter was registered as Evelyn,” Daniel said. “But that isn't the name she was given at birth.”
I turned over the picture.
On the back was Maren's handwriting.
Our little June. Daddy will love you when he meets you.
The words blurred.
June.
My daughter's name was June.
And Maren had believed I would someday meet her.
“Where is she now?”
Daniel reached into the folder.
He withdrew a recent photograph.
A woman stood outside a large white house, holding a little girl whose face was turned toward the camera.
The child wore the butterfly bracelet.
The woman was Tessa.
And on the photograph's back, written in the same careful handwriting as the hospital note, were six words:
New guardianship hearing. November 12. Final.
I looked at Daniel.
“Tell me that isn't what I think it is.”
He closed his eyes.
“Tessa is trying to adopt your daughter.”
May you like
Then he opened them again.
“And, Rowan, according to the petition, you personally signed away your parental rights.”
