Chapter 6 - THE NAME ON THE ROSARY
“You’re wrong.”
The words came automatically.
Not because I knew he was wrong.
Because I needed him to be.
Edmund stood between two police officers with his wrists cuffed.
“Rose raised you.”
“She was my mother.”
“She loved you as one.”
“That is not the same sentence.”
Adrian moved closer to me.
I wanted him there.
But I also wanted everyone ten feet away.
My entire childhood had shifted sideways in one breath.
The woman I remembered packing school lunches, sewing buttons onto my coat, and kissing my forehead before leaving forever had not been my mother?
Then who had she been?
My aunt?
And Evelyn Hart, whom I had always understood to have died before I was born, had somehow given birth to me?
Inspector Grant looked at Edmund.
“How do you know?”
Edmund said nothing.
“Lord Blackwood?”
“I was there.”
My stomach twisted.
“Where?”
“At the hospital.”
I stared at him.
“What hospital?”
“A private clinic outside Edinburgh.”
The train ticket flashed in my mind.
November seventeenth.
“Thomas had been dead two days,” Edmund said. “Evelyn went into labor early.”
Adrian looked sick.
“My father knew she was pregnant?”
“Yes.”
“Was the baby his?”
Edmund looked at me.
“Yes.”
The world stopped.
Adrian’s hand fell away from mine.
Not from rejection.
Shock.
If Edmund was telling the truth, Thomas Blackwood was my father.
And Thomas Blackwood was Adrian’s father.
“No,” Adrian whispered.
Edmund closed his eyes.
“I told Margaret this would happen.”
I could barely breathe.
Adrian and I had spent two years planning a life together.
We had chosen a church.
Talked about children.
Argued about whether our kitchen should have dark cabinets.
And now Edmund was telling us we shared a biological father.
Inspector Grant stepped forward.
“Stop.”
Everyone looked at him.
“We are not going to treat the statement of a violent suspect as established fact.”
It was the sanest sentence spoken all night.
“You have no proof,” Grant continued.
Edmund looked toward Margaret’s coat.
“I have more than you think.”
I almost hated him for saying it.
Grant pointed at the paramedics.
“Hospital first.”
I did not argue.
For the first time, I could not.
At the hospital, doctors reset my collarbone and treated the burns along my shoulder.
Adrian stayed outside the curtain.
Not because he wanted distance.
Because we did not know what we were anymore.
That hurt worse than the injury.
Near midnight, Inspector Grant returned.
Edmund had been taken into custody.
Lewis had given a full statement.
The second guard had also admitted Edmund ordered them to restrain Adrian but claimed he never expected the rifle to be used.
Then Grant placed a plastic evidence pouch beside my bed.
Inside lay a small wooden rosary.
“I thought you might recognize this.”
I stared.
“I don’t.”
“It was sewn into Margaret Blackwood’s coat beneath the opposite sleeve.”
I picked up the sealed pouch.
The rosary was simple.
Dark wooden beads.
A small silver cross.
One bead had a name carved into it.
ROSE.
Adrian stood near the window.
He had barely spoken for twenty minutes.
Grant continued.
“Regional cybercrime recovered your livestream.”
Relief rushed through me.
“And the board?”
“The four independent votes were preserved. The fraudulent Adrian vote has been suspended pending investigation.”
“Who submitted it?”
“We don’t know yet.”
Grant placed another printed sheet on the table.
“But we traced the login.”
Adrian turned.
“Where?”
“Blackwood Foundation headquarters.”
My stomach dropped.
The same building where I worked.
“Which terminal?”
“That’s where it gets interesting. The login came from the archival records room.”
The locked cabinet.
Margaret’s original files.
Someone had been inside.
“Can we access the building?” I asked.
Grant shook his head.
“Not tonight. It’s now a protected evidence site.”
“That archive cabinet matters.”
“We know.”
“No, you don’t.”
I told him about Margaret’s old raven seal.
About the bracelet.
About private assistance cases.
Grant listened.
Then he lifted the rosary pouch.
“This matters too.”
“Why?”
“We ran the engraving through old photographs from the estate.”
He placed a photocopy on the table.
A Blackwood family Christmas photograph.
Edmund.
Margaret.
Charles.
His wife.
A toddler Adrian.
And standing behind them in a plain staff dress, holding a tray, was Rose Hart.
My Rose.
The woman I believed had abandoned me when I was seven.
Except according to everything I had ever been told, she was living with me in Birmingham at the time.
My hands began to shake.
“There are two women named Rose.”
Grant shook his head.
“Same date of birth.”
He placed another photograph beside it.
A staff identification card.
Rose Hart.
The face was unmistakable.
My mother.
My aunt.
Whoever she truly was.
“She worked at Blackwood Hall?” Adrian asked.
“For nine years,” Grant said.
I looked at the date.
1995 to 2004.
I had lived with her until 2002.
“How could she work here and raise me two hundred miles away?”
Grant pulled out a final document.
“She wasn’t full-time.”
The payroll showed only a handful of working days each month.
Mostly weekends.
Private events.
Foundation dinners.
Always assigned to Margaret Blackwood personally.
Adrian came closer.
“Grandmother knew her.”
“Yes,” I said.
“And hid it.”
A nurse entered carrying my repaired dress and belongings from the estate.
Among them was the bracelet.
Grant had already photographed and swabbed it.
I picked it up.
Something shifted inside the clasp.
I pressed my nail beneath the edge.
A tiny compartment opened.
Inside was a folded scrap no larger than a postage stamp.
Grant immediately leaned forward.
“Don’t touch it.”
Too late.
The paper had already opened against my finger.
Three words were written in faded blue ink.
NOT THOMAS’S CHILD.
I stared at them.
Adrian stared too.
Everything Edmund told us about my birth collapsed in an instant.
But beneath the words was another line.
A name.
The name of the man who had fathered me.
CHARLES BLACKWOOD.
Adrian’s legal father.
The man everyone believed died at sea with his wife.
Adrian sank slowly into the chair.
I looked from the note to him.
If that message was true, we were still connected to the Blackwood family.
But not as siblings.
I was Charles’s daughter.
Adrian was Thomas’s son.
Cousins.
My stomach turned.
Still impossible.
Still devastating.
Then Grant took the paper under the reading lamp.
“There’s writing on the back.”
He flipped it.
May you like
One sentence.
MARGARET LIED TO BOTH BROTHERS.
